The Key Drivers Of Growth Behind Our Prison Population

Our modern society consist of many social problems. However, many Canadians have yet to acknowledge a major issue on our international community today. Within Canada, prison overcrowding has arisen and continues too. As many of Canadian prisons exceed its maximum capacity, we have yet not created a proper plan to execute this problem. Consequently, with the prison population accumulating, there is now a decline in correctional spending. Today, it costs over $115,000 to maintain an offender in an institution (CSC statistics 2014). As a result, the amount of inmates in custody throughout Canada are 36, 845 which includes 21, 704 in our provincial / territorial institution and 15,141 in our federal institution (Statistics Canada 2013/2014). Therefore,

In this period of mass incarceration and tough on crime era policies, harsh prison and jail conditions are being utilized as a form of deterrent to reduce crime and improve public safety. Accordingly, well over “2.3 million people are in prison or jail, and 700,000 former offenders are returned into society each year and 77 percent were sent back to prison costing taxpayers massive amounts of revenue.” (Mears & Cochran, 2015) As a result of this the United States possesses the “highest incarceration rate in the world” due to this faulty theory. (Mears & Cochran, 2015) For many politicians and the general public, they believe the idea that stringent and austere prison conditions will create a milieu in which an offender will want to reform to avoid these intolerable living environments. This situation is exacerbated by the lack of studies, and politicians not heeding the existing research. According to Listwan et al., limited number of studies that has paid systematic attention to how exposure to the deprivations or pains of imprisonment might foster reoffending. This omission is somewhat perplexing, given that the pains of imprisonment have long been documented and that policymakers have explicitly celebrated the painfulness of prisons as a way of teaching offenders that “crime does not pay.” (Listwan et al., 2013)

Since the 1970s, America’s prison population rate has risen 700%. Despite the U.S. comprising only 5% of the world’s population, it is the largest jailer with 25% of the world’s prison population with one in 99 adults in prison and one in 31 under some type of correctional control (Mass Incarceration Problems, 2014, p. 1). According to 2013 data, 2.2 million are currently incarcerated in U.S. prisons or jails (Incarceration, 2013, para. 1), a figure that indicates a rising problem with prison overcrowding. While prison overcrowding increases the economic burdens on local and state governments, common factors leading to the high prison population is linked to the need for improved juvenile programs that deter criminal behavior and fund for rehabilitation for reentry into mainstream society. With effective programs to deter juvenile crime and to aid in offender reentry coupled with sentencing reforms, overcrowding in the nation’s prisons would decline.

Prison’s were established a long time ago to try to put an end to the rapidly increasing crime rate, however over time we are seeing the effectiveness of the most prisons decreasing. As a result of this epidemic, prisons have a higher recidivism rate and over 40 percents are currently operating over maximum capacity (Holder.) Through different types of research, we are finding out that our prison systems are no longer effective and there is a serious need for improvement. The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate almost ¼ of the worlds prisoners (Holder.)

From 1973 to 2000 the imprisonment rate in the U.S has increased by a multiple of four, while the actual crime rate saw no such increase over that period. (Visher and Travis, 2003, p. 89-90) Historically, the prison system in America had always been marred with inadequacies and failures, specifically in rehabilitating prisoners. The significant increase in incarceration rates have put an even greater burden on the already inefficient prison system. In reality, the prison system does not actually function as a means of rehabilitating prisoners, and real purpose of the institute is to basically keep the “deplorables” of society away from the public eye. It serves as a tool to degrade members of society to the bottom of the social ladder and strip them of their most basic rights. For many prisoners, rehabilitation comes in the form of “corrections” which is largely characterized by the humiliation, abuse, and subjugation of inmates by correction officers. This form of rehabilitation is largely malicious and ineffective in its procedures and outcomes. Often times inmates, leave prison more emotionally and physically damaged that they were upon entrance as a consequence of the dismal conditions they were subjugated to. The current high rates of recidivism have testified to the fact that our prisons have failed as a deterrent. As a result, it must be

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration. It spends more resources on its prison system than any other nation and has the largest prison population in the world. Between 1980 and 2016, the number of inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons increased from 320,000 to more than 1.5 million. This corresponds to a change in the incarceration rate from 139 to 450 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Most lawmakers tend to believe that incarceration is a necessary construct needed to reform criminals to properly incorporate them into society. They insist imprisonment reduces crime rates through incapacitation and deterrence. Thus, it is not surprising that expenditures on corrections increased as states built new prisons,

The United States prison population has expanded at an increasingly rapid rate over that past several decades. Each day, more and more criminal offenders are sent to prisons; most of which were designed to house fewer inmates but are now packed to their limits. This “mass- incarceration era” as many scholars and commentators of the Criminal Justice System call it, is a result of several key issues that have created an environment within the correctional system that forces many inmates to serve longer prison sentences while increasing recidivism rates. Current federal and state sentencing policies have resulted in historically high rates of offender recidivism and the highest incarceration rates in the world (Warren, 2007). As a result, prison population and overcrowding has rapidly increased and has become a serious issue across the country however, a reform in sentencing policies, more early-release incentives, and reintegration back into society through rehabilitation will help reduce recidivism and prevent the continuing rise of prison populations. (change once paper is complete)

The subject of prison evokes fearful and violent images seen in movies or on television; outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water that are intended to repulse people and deter them from committing crimes and ending up in such a position. Unfortunately, the reality of the American prison system is just as troubling as the dated stereotypes surrounding it. Despite its success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the modern prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society. It has proven to be an inefficient and ineffective system by focusing on punishment over rehabilitation, leading to issues such as overcrowding, wasting taxpayers’ money and a high recidivism rate.

In this paper we will discuss some descriptions of jail’s place in corrections and its role throughout history on most of these offenses come with a sentence of a year or less and anyone with over a year sentence is usually sent to a prison facility (Seiter, 2011). On the other hand, prisons have an ample amount of time to work with, rehabilitate, and reform offenders. Prisons do this with the hope that offenders can eventually be placed back into society and limit their recidivism back to crime. “The first jails were created in England and they were called goal” (Seiter, 2011,

Nevertheless, it is important to point out prisons conditions doses matter since it illustrates how Australian prison influence how the prisoners rehabilitated. For example, the prison studies report the statistics shows Australia Total prison population is approximately 35,804, which currently rank 47 in the world along with prison population rate of 151 reaching the rank of 97. (Prison studies 2014). From the result it shows how overpopulated Australia prison currently is and emphasis how important it is to build a better prisons conditions. For instance, overpopulation is a great example of how prisons conditions affect the prison system and prisoner’s mental health. Notably In the research by John Howard society (John Howard 1996), the

The United States is a country of inmates. With over 2.3 million Americans behind bars, it equates to almost one in every 100 Americans (Hunt, 2011). The United States makes up a little more than four percent of the world’s population. However, America has more inmates than the thirty five leading European countries combined. In 2013, the U.S. admitted 9,000 more sentenced prisoners than they released that year. (Carson, 2014). The U.S prison population has more than doubled over the last fifteen years, causing an extreme overpopulation and financial burden without any immediate solutions.

Due to the “war on drugs”, prison overcrowding is becoming more and more of an issue, putting a strain on not just the law enforcement but our society as well. America has been implementing a “war on drugs” policy since the early nineteen – seventies. Since the creating of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 1973 under Richard Nixon, then the Office of National Drug Control Policy under Ronald Reagan in 1988, the United States has found themselves in an endless war and in constant debt huge amounts of money.

Prison overcrowding has become a serious problem within the United States. Despite the fact that the nation has opened or expanded almost three-hundred prisons in less than seven years, the average prison space available for inmates has dropped by over ten percent. Prison overcrowding has gotten worse. Especially as crime has become more violent. And drug related crimes have more often resulted in confinement.(Allen, Simonsen, Latessa 169) The overcrowding within the prisons has caused safety hazards and hazardous living conditions for the prisoners. Two different groups, such as Tough-Sentencing Supporters and Opponents are taking action to solve these problems at hand. Tough Sentencing Supporters say more prisons are needed to be built

The primary goal is to set expectations of the offender that with the tools provided, the offender can satisfy. Optimizing the client's ability to become a self-determined, law-abiding member of society requires efficiency and a model that matches the individual's complex needs. The program shares in the success of the client and is motivated by that success. "The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), have also concluded that probation is not effective in reducing recidivism without the help of the world of social workers (Wilson p. 13)". The current system is too separated and not effective in developing socially motivated individuals that choose to make legal decisions on their own. At this time, the burgeoning prison system requires

Today’s prison population shows that an overwhelming majority of prisoners are the product of social breakdown. Prisoners are far more likely to have lived in poverty, to come from broken families, to be unemployed and in considerable debt and to be experiencing an addiction. Deprivation is an important factor that leads to crime. Poverty doesn’t cause crime but there is an obvious direct relationship between them. Effects of deprivation can impact on