The State Of California Is Eliminating Mandatory Minimums And Creating More Successful Programs

The policy options that will be discussed are establishing efficient and beneficial rehabilitation systems in prisons, establishing educational systems in prisons, eliminating private prisons, and reducing mandatory sentencing laws. These are a few of the many ideas and solutions that the United States can take in order to reduce its high incarceration rate.

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).

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

In short the United States judicial system sends criminal offenders into the largest prison system in the world, where the increasing population forces overcrowding, widens the gap between state spending and revenue and fails to prevent recidivism; we must re-evaluate and reduce our current prison system in order to reduce state debt as well as provide inmates with livable conditions and keep them from returning to prison.

By the end of the year 2013, California must reduce its state prison population by 46,000 inmates, which is at least 137.5 percent of its design capacity intended to hold 80,000 inmates only (Galik, 2013). With the staggering record of prison inmates, resources have become limited, creating a bigger concern for the health and safety of inmates and prison employees. If there are no solutions to reduce the prison population from overcrowding, one other major concern many people fear is the early release of serious offenders back into society.

The concept of mandatory minimum sentencing has been plaguing the justice system of the United States of America for too many years and therefore must be abolished. If mandatory minimum sentencing were to be done away with, then the criminal justice system could finally start to bring desperately needed change to itself and start to get back to where it needs to be; a system that takes people with a problem and returns a reformed individual capable of positively contributing to society. By getting rid of mandatory minimum sentencing, the prison populations could be reduced, allowing for more attention to be given to the reformation of each individual giving them a better chance at success. The research shows that getting rid of mandatory minimum sentencing will be more cost effective, keep prison populations lower, limit unjust sentencing, and make sure that the punishment that an individual receives is proportional to the crime that they have been convicted of.

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

This unfair legislature depletes law enforcement resources, that instead could be utilized for other serious crimes. In federal prisons, it costs $29, 000 on average to maintain a single inmate, taking possession of 25% of the budget distributed to the Department of Justice. As written in the a Washington Post Article, US District Attorney Judge Mark Bennett stated that “he couldn’t forget was the total, more than 1,100 nonviolent offenders and counting to whom he had given mandatory minimum sentences he often considered unjust. That meant more than $200 million in taxpayer money he thought had been misspent.” . Apart from the financial aspect, mandatory minimum sentencing simply fills to reduce crime in society. Over the years, the amount of people arrested for drug offenses

In order to reduce the rate significantly, it is essential to modify the way offenders are penalized; ways to improve this would be: having professionals evaluate the offender and allowing the judge to decide whether a program or incarceration is best suited, creating stricter restrictions to prevent excessive and harsh sentencing, allowing medical programs to take place of incarceration when seen fit, improving the work exchange program, and broadening the use of daily reporting

Over the years the United States incarceration rate has gradually increased. The money spent on an individual incarcerated each year is more than an average person living off minimum wage. Can these rate decrease? Yes, creating programs that’s actually going to benefit individuals rather than allowing them to feel comfortable with being locked up. Many got comfortable with the idea of being locked up to the point they don’t to return home because life on the outside they are no longer familiar with it.

Therefore, if we reduce the overcrowding rate, what are we going to do with all the criminals not headed to jail or prison? Well, that brings us to step four: realizing the benefits of the alternatives to incarceration. Because building prisons puts a terrible strain on most state’s budgets, taxpayers have been more willing to consider programs that might cost less- as long as they also control and punish crimes appropriately. Alternatives saves the taxpayers money along with strengthening families and communities by keeping them together and allowing criminals to contribute to the community like paying taxes and getting a job.(Alternatives, 2) 77% of adults believe alternatives are the best way to deal with non-violent and non-serious offenders. Alternative promote good behavior by advertising the possibility of “good-time credits” which allow prisoners to reduce their sentence with good behavior. (Overcrowding, 1) These types of benefits will surely make an impact on our society for the better.

The current criminal justice laws do not effectively address the safety needs of our state. The prisons and jails are overpopulated – they were designed to hold 38,600 people but 50,600 Ohioans are in prison. Ohio’s prison population has increased 12% in the past decade, even though violent crime rates

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.

These measures were taken to ensure public safety but are now posing a problem for our correctional facilities. Overcrowding and budgets are among the problems brought about by these measures. Both the state and federal correctional population throughout the United States have steadily seen significant increases in their population, every year for the past decades. Based on the census found on the Bureau of Justice website, the data collected between June 30th 2000 to December 30th 2005 showed that prisoners held in custody between federal and state prisons increased by 10%. (“Bureau of Justice Statistics”, p.1 -2)

Since the 1980’s, crime rates have been fluctuating independently of incarceration rates. As violent crime and property crime slowly decreased, incarceration rates have been steadily increasing. The number of people in prison, on parole or on probation, 6.9 million Americans, exceeds the populations of the second- and third-largest cities, Los Angeles and Chicago, combined. For a nation that loves freedom and cherishes our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the situation should be intolerable. It is destroying lives and communities. After the war on drugs began, many new laws were put into action. Quickly creating new laws, States and Congress initiated mandatory minimums.