The Problem Of Prison Overcrowding

By beginning his paper with background information, Schuck invites the reader into the conversation – overcrowding is so high in the prison system that the holding capacity of prisons has become unconstitutional, but will persist due to skeptical, crime-fearing, and tax-weary public that will decline any reforms presented. Schuck uses California as a prime example of the serious

Within the last four decades, the rate of incarceration in the United States has continued to increase exponentially. The Bureau of Justice reports that the inmate population in 1971 was estimated at two hundred thousand, while the current number stands at roughly 1.5 million – nearly eight times more than the number of inmates in 1971. Because of the high costs associated with prison operations, their overcrowding, and wrongful convictions, California introduced legislative measures such as Propositions 36 and 47 as well as Assembly Bills 109 and 117, in order to lessen the number of incarcerations. Not only will implementing these reforms save the state millions in revenue, they will also rightfully place truly dangerous criminals in

County jails are not equipped to “manage the influx of more prisoners, and for longer periods of time, as well as provide ‘evidence-based’ rehabilitative programs,” which has serious implications for confinement conditions and for the overall success or failure of Realignment (Owen & Mobley, 2012, p. 47). Even before the Realignment Act, California jails were struggling with “crowding, court-ordered ordered caps on their populations, antiquated facilities and few programs” (Owen & Mobley, 2012, p. 48). Counties are limited in their ability to address these concerns because of county-level budget cuts.

Mortimer Zuckerman, owner and publisher of U.S. News & World Report, where he serves as editor-in-chief wrote “Harsh Sentencing, Overstuffed Prisons--it's Time for Reform”, which he said “Too many people are in prison who should not be there. How many? Most of them! It is not that they are innocent of the offenses that put them there. It is that they are in prison mainly because we have criminalized vast areas for nonviolent offenders and compounded that with a distorted sentencing system.” The federal level, nonviolent offenders account for 90% of prisoners. Federal prisons today house nearly 40% more inmates than they were designed for, most of them repeat offenders. The overcrowding of prisons encourages the prison administration to focus on harsh and inhumane means of discipline to maintain control over the large number of inmates. Prisoners in overcrowded correctional settings interact with more unfamiliar people, under close quarters that offer little or no privacy, where their basic needs are less likely to be addressed or met. Overcrowding in prisons puts inmates under painful stress and reduces the services available to them. I believe that prison overcrowding can be reduced by Proposition 47, which made California the first state to make changes to the status of certain crimes that were once a felony into misdemeanors, including drug possession charges where the drug was solely for personal use, exempting their inclusion from the three-strike law. It would also

Since 1984, the California Penal System has been forced to undergo drastic changes resulting from increased legislation aimed at increasing the severity of retribution to offenders leading to an exponentially increasing prison population. In the 132 years between 1852 and 1984, the state of California built twelve prisons, but has since supplemented the prison system with 21 new facilities. In 1977, the California Department of Corrections was responsible for 19,600 inmates. California’s inmate population now stands at 160,655, an increase of close to 800%.

California is known for many things: beaches, sunshine, surfing, and some of the most crowded prisons found in America. California’s state prisons have long been faced with the issue of overcrowding, largely due to California’s tough-on-crime laws put into place to keep crime rates low and discriminate against criminal activity. Unfortunately, these laws have backfired and now serve to keep far too many non-violent Californians locked for much longer than necessary. This has led severe overcrowding within the California prison system to the point where the federal government has become involved in solving the issue.

The U.S. Supreme Court has acknowledged the growing distress, deeming California’s state prisons unconstitutionally crowded. In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled out that California’s 33 state prisons have become too overcrowded to the point where there are no sufficient medical and mental health care available (Realignment AB 109, 2013). The U.S. Supreme Court determined that the 33 state prisons are violating constitutional exclusions, under the Eighth Amendment, against unfamiliar punishment and brutality, says the American Legislative Exchange Council, an American organization producing model policies for state legislators (ALEC, 2010).

Since the tough-on-crime era began in the 1980s, the California prison system and parolee population have grown tenfold. This is in great part due to the three strikes law that passed in 1994. This law made it a requirement for any offender convicted of a felony with two previous felonies to go to prison for a minimum of twenty five years. This law sent many people to prison for longer sentences due to non-violent drug offenses, when in actuality they should have been sentenced to rehab. Prison overcrowding is an important topic that all Americans should care about, since according to The Bureau of Justice Statistics, over ninety-five percent of all prison inmates will be released at some point, with over eighty-five percent of them being placed under parolee supervision. Of this population, sixty-five percent suffer from substance abuse issues and meet the need for treatment for their addiction. Drug and alcohol abuse, specifically drug abuse, and crime are inextricably related. Unfortunately, the majority of those released from prison who suffer from addiction issues are not treated while incarcerated, and as a result end up back in prison.

Because the California prison system is severely overcrowded, it is unable to deliver adequate resources and services to its inmates. In 2011, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the system—operating at 145% of its designed capacity—violates the 8th Amendment and mandated that the state significantly reduce its prison population by 2016 (Divito). Many of the state’s GOP legislators called for expansion of the state’s correctional facilities, claiming that criminals would be a threat to communities if the state relaxed enforcement or released some prisoners early (Wildermuth). While there is merit in this argument, spending money to expand jail capacities without reducing the number of people who are incarcerated only conceals the fundamental problem, rather than correcting it. Instead, a more effective alternative is to invest resources in “mental health courts, drug treatment, mental health treatment, vocational rehabilitation, evidence-based programs [in order to] reduce the population in a more sustained way” (Siders). Recently, in Los Angeles, community stakeholders have come to agree that many of the city’s offenders do not necessarily need incarceration, but instead education and outreach programs. As a result, the local justice system has begun to promote a system of restorative justice.

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).

Due to budget crises in states across the United States of America, state governments must cut funding to their punishment facilities causing overcrowding in prisons to increase every day. Overcrowded prisons pose a potential breeding ground for crime as hundreds of inmates are squeezed into small accommodations. Thousands of low-level offenders receive jail sentences each day, these criminals make up about a third of the inmates in the United States. In the words of Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of India, in the conservative National Review magazine, “We are imprisoning, in our most expensive spaces, more people for relatively minor, nonviolent offenses, like low-level property and drug violations. Some of our guests are not with the state corrections system long enough for any rehabilitation, substance-abuse counseling or job training to take place” (Katel). Evidently attention and change to this neglected criminal punishment system need to be addressed. This issue remains a troubling problem in our country, state governments offer the best possible solutions to prison overcrowding such as directing local officials to perform and improve prison construction, rethinking criminal law and responding to budgetary concerns.

All aspects of the prison system have increased exponentially since the 1970s: “population size, budget, staffing, and number of facilities” (Owen & Mobley, 2012, p. 46). Not only does California have one of the highest incarceration rates nationally and internationally, it also has one of the highest rates of recidivism. Prior to 2011, two-thirds of those released were re-incarcerated within 3 years, most often for technical parole violations – not new convictions (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation [CDCR], 2013); the majority of rearrests in California occurred within one year (Durose, Cooper, & Snyder, 2014). In Brown v. Plata, the Supreme Court ruled that California prisons violated the 8th Amendment on the grounds

This law increased the population rate in prison because not only did it affect serious crimes, it also affected those that committed petty crimes. Later on, after the prisons were so overcrowded, California’s Proposition 36 changed the way “Three Strikes “ law was. Proposition 36 allowed those to only get life sentence if their new felony conviction was serious or violent (“California Proposition”, 2017). Not only that, Martinez states that the state was then under pressure from a three-judge federal court. In 2011, the federal court ordered the state to reduce its population to 137.5 % by December 31st or be held in contempt. The judges determined that in order to meet the medical and mental health care of inmates, the only way to resolve this was to reduce prison overcrowding (“California to Challenge”, 2013). Another addition to the changes in the prison population was California’s Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011, this allowed certain offenders to serve their sentence in jail rather than prison (“Realignment Report”, 2013).

Nelson Mandela once said, “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” The prisons in the United States have been overcrowded for many years and require a change in order to fix this. Some of the main causes for prison overcrowding that will be covered in this paper are mass incarceration, long sentencing, recidivism, and prisoners of drug crimes. Overcrowding of prisons in the United States is a major issue that affects not only the prisoners themselves, but taxpayers and politicians. Although there are many different solutions to prison overcrowding such as building more prisons, alternative and shorter sentences, etc., the issue is still prevalent. Some feel the best way to deal with overcrowding is to build more prisons to accommodate the large influx of prisoners. Others feel the best mode of action to solve this problem is through shorter, and alternative sentencing, which frees up space for serious offenders of the law. This paper argues that shorter, and alternative prison sentences are the most effective way to reduce the prison population in the United States. Prisons and their overcrowding is a controversial topic not to be taken lightly.

When it comes to prison overcrowding, many factors cause it to occur. Part of the overcrowding can be attributed both to specific policies. For instance, the “War on Drugs” has enacted harsher penalties for drug violations, directly increasing the number incarcerated. Part of this policy includes mandatory sentences, which indirectly affect the overcrowding. More people are incarcerated for longer periods, leading to conditions so inhumane that in 2011, the Supreme Court declared one prison violated the Eighth Amendment. While policies are partially responsible for overcrowding in prisons, criminal behavior also needs to be taken into account. The USA has one of the highest recidivism rates in the world—within five years of release from state prison, law enforcement rearrests 76.6% of inmates.. Many are arrested for violating parole, and some go on to commit entirely new crimes. Apparently, there is little motivation to staying out of prison, what with the minimal rehabilitation programs and general stigma laid on criminals in the work force. This makes the prison system, in itself, ineffectual, and the attempts to decrease inmate population similarly pointless.