The Problem Of Prison Overcrowding

According to statistical data found in the Bureau for Justice Records, there are a number of problems that most prisons in the country face. The records indicate that the number of adult federal and state inmates increased from `139% in `1980 to 260% (Walker, 1999). As a natural default, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This in itself brings about one of the major problems that are faced in modern incarceration which is overcrowding in most prison facilities. The number of offenders in the country has increased rapidly over time while the country prison system has not really been able to cope with this rapid increase. Prisons intended for one or two inmates are now crowded with more than fifty individuals. Because of this most prisons are overcrowded and most of the facilities available are unable to cater for the needs of all the prisoners (Siegel, 2009).

As of 2015, 2.7% of adults in the United States were under correctional control, the lowest rate since 1994, however that is still roughly 6.7 million adults (Kaeble & Glaze, 2016). While the correctional population has declined, correctional facilities in the United States are still grossly overcrowded, with many facilities at or surpassing capacity. A report in 2010 by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation showed that on average, facilities were at 175% capacity (Brown, 2010). However, as of midnight on October 31st, 2017 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that their facilities, on average, were 132% occupied (Brown, 2017). Not only is prison overcrowding a burden on the facilities themselves, but also on the inmates. Prison overcrowding, that is, housing more inmates than the facility can humanely facilitate (Haney, 2006), places a strain on all resources throughout the correctional facility, including on the healthcare that’s offered, educational programs, and most dramatically on the physical space available to house inmates (Ekland-Olson, 1983).

In any given year now, incarceration rates has tripled with approximately 13 million people introduced to American jails in any given year. This increase in the prison population far outpaced the crime rate and the US population growth. Today, America has around 5% of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prison population.

Have you ever been to prison before? Unfortunately it is not uncommon for many people in the United States to end up in prison at any given time in their life. Chances are, if you have not been to prison you know somebody that has been imprisoned, as America has the highest rate of incarceration in the whole world. Although America’s population only accounts for 5% of the world's population, we have the highest prison rate at 25% of the whole world’s incarcerated population (Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2015). Why do we continue to see these prisons overcrowded, and how exactly does this affect the inmates?

Prison Overcrowding: Prisons have become warehouses of human beings as opposed to institutions meant to provide a means to engage in restitution by delinquent individuals in society. “One necessary condition for rising incarceration rates has been the massive expansion in prison construction and capacity, without which prison populations could not have grown so dramatically” (Guetzkow & Schoon, 2015). As more prisons are being built, more delinquents are being incarcerated in order to fill them. “Prison facilities are filled 38 percent beyond rated capacity, with overcrowding being particularly acute in higher-security institutions” (Rowland, 2013).

In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the

The United States houses the largest prison population of the world at 25 percent and returns the greatest amount of inmates back into society. Currently, there are over two million people incarcerated in the U.S. with approximately the same number of inmates being released each year (Haney, 2015 p. 416). Many people wonder why prison overcrowding has become such a big issue when there is an

High incarceration rates in the United States are astronomical. According to Williams (2014), there are more than twenty-four million people incarcerated between the state, federal, juvenile correctional facilities, jails, military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment center and prisons in the U.S. territories. The makes the United States to have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Texas prison system has grown faster than any other state and has been reported that one out of every twenty adults were in the corrections system under one form or another (Texas Tough, n.d.). The problem is that the crime rates do not account for the [prison] rates (Hartney, 2006). Thus, from the overcrowding, there are issues with

Over the last decade the prison population in the United States has increased but the total admissions has decreased. In 2004, the national statistics for the prison population showed 1,497,100 persons to be incarcerated from Federal Institutions to State Institutions. Ten years later in 2014, the prison population increased to 1,562,525. This increase in population is not as dramatic when it comes to comparing 2004 and 2014. However, comparing 2014 to 1978 there is a tremendous increase in population, the total population in 1978 was 307, 276. From the war on drugs to the increase numbers of homicides, in 36 years we have incarcerated over one million additional people. In one year, the justice system admitted 631,

As we all know – there are tons of social issues within the entire world that Criminal Justice Practitioners deal with, most likely, on a daily basis. One of the many social issues I’ve chosen is Prison Overcrowding.

Incarceration is not meant to be fun. Prison overcrowding is becoming major issue all over the United State. Our prison and jail inmates are growing dramatically. More and more people are committing more crime, which cause them sometimes locked up. Each state has a different way of sentence offenders. The dictionary define overcrowding as beyond what is usual or comfortable, simple means you cannot have more than the amount of inmate in a cell than the state allows you to. A jail cell design for four inmates can’t have six inmates in there. California is one of the state that has been infected by prison overcrowding and need to come to a conclusion on how to fix and prevents it from happening. The number of inmates are increasing based on their

Prison overcrowding continues to be one several challenges of criminal justice in the United States. Even though many prisons have been built to throughout the country to accommodate the growing numbers of inmates. The most prison overcrowding is a harsh reality in many jurisdictions and in the federal systems. One of the issues is the true definition of the prison capacity. The different types of capacities are rated capacity, operational capacity and design capacity. Rated capacity refers to the size of the inmate population that a facility can handle according to the judgment of experts. Operational capacity is the number of inmates that a facility can effectively accommodate based on an appraisal of the institution's staff, programs, and

Prison Overcrowding has become a major issue in the United States. Many laws such as the three strikes law and also mandatory minimums have played a major part in prison overcrowding in the United States. The violence that is caused by prison

On the one hand, incarceration can beneficial in reducing crimes and protecting the communities from dangers that threaten their well-being. Unfortunately, the number of incarceration is growing especially in the United States. It has become an alarming social issue in recent years. A study reports that “the United States has had the highest incarceration rate in the world since 2002” (Wakefield and Uggen, 2013, p. 359). Here, this quote reflects a hasty growth of population inside prisons since 2002. In that year, the United States ranked the first position in leading or addressing this issue compared to other countries; as a result, the rise of the mass of incarceration is growing more and more without non-stop.

In America’s tough economic society, over population has become an exceedingly hot topic issue. However, overcrowding in America’s prison system has been a severe problem since the 1970's. The majority of the changes have come from different policies on what demographic to imprison and for what reason. The perspective of locking up criminals because they are "evil" is what spawned this (Allen, 2008). Because of this perspective the prison system in America is in need of serious reorganization. Since 1980, most states have one or more of their prisons or the entire system under orders from the federal courts to maintain minimum constitutional standards (Stewart, 2006).