The Three Alternatives To Local Control Of Jail

Prisons today are pushed to their limits, both state, and federal prisons. Inmates are forced to live in unsanitary, unhealthy, unsafe, and poor conditions. Men and woman should not be made to sleep on floors, sleep in tents outside, or fight for a spot in a long line to shower. This issue needs to be addressed, and some states have proceeded to do so and have had great results.

Glen Loury argues in his essay called “A Nation of Jailer” that the United States is a nation that follows a society that has been affected by racial bias. Loury claims that the people who are targeted by law are racial discriminated. Loury mainly talks about the “poorly educated black and Hispanic men who reside in large numbers in our great urban centers.” (1) Loury has made a clear and strong point. Loury shows his points in three main ways. Loury emphasizes his points by using ethos, logos, and pathos. Loury uses many well-known characters in his writing, and Loury uses strong phrases that impact the reader emotionally and questions to make sure the reader has some sort of connection to Loury’s evidence. Furthermore, Loury gives a lot

There are five state prison systems in which exist in today's penitentiary systems and they are maximum-security prisons, close-high security prisons, medium-security prisons, and open security facilities. Variations between these five systems are common and uncommon because in a

Funding is another major issue facing prisons and prison administration currently and will continue into the future. The operational cost to house inmates must stay with the limits of an assigned budget. Currently a majority of prisons operate under state and federal governments, unlike the past when private prisons were more common. Private prisons were often more cost-efficient because of labor costs, competitive bidding, and less red tape involved with private prisons.

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.

There are other alternatives such as justice reinvestment, which refers to diverting the funding used to keep people in prison and supplying communities with high rates of offending and incarceration, giving those communities the ability to invest in programs and institution that address the underlying cause of crime, thereby reducing criminal behavior and

Traditionally, state-controlled prisons have been taken to be more dangerous as compared to federal prison system because they always house more dangerous criminals. Some of the states like New York tend to have their inmates spend most of their time during their sentence in maximum security prisons; however, federal prisons apply lower level security prisons for longer duration of incarceration (recently).

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

Private prisons have a negative effect on states and local governments. Unfortunately, the number of private prisons has been increasing since their inception in 1983 causing further problems. For-profit prisons offer no real benefits and are bad investments for states. Furthermore, private prisons beleaguer communities with high turnover rates that hurt local economies. The demands of these institutions put an excessive burden on the local community’s infrastructure. Similarly, private prisons strain the county and city legal systems. More often than not, spin-off industries and economic benefits promised by the for-profit correction industry fail to appear. Additionally, private prisons are allowed to cherry pick the least expensive

State run jail are one of the three local control of jails alternatives. State run is an operated jail system that is ran in four states such as Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. These four states have full operational responsibility for jails. This is for the exception of Alaska and five locally operated jails. Cooperative regional arrangements is local control of jails that focus more on the local or state control. The states that was the first to adopt the regional jails are Virginia, North Dakota, West Virginia, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. The arrangements takes place when jurisdiction is willing to contact with neighboring cities and countries to discuss the housing of prisoners. If the government decides that no

In the US, the number of incarcerated people in the prison systems cumulatively will form the fourth largest city in the US by population. This serves to underline the importance of addressing the issues that affect the prisoners and the other employees of these correctional services. The first issue that is affecting the success of the correctional services provided by the prison services is the congestion in the prisons. Most of the prisons in the United States were built a long time ago and with the increased population of imprisoned offenders, their capacity to handle prisoners has been greatly overstretched. An example of overstretched prison facilities is in the state of California where the state has been forced to transfer its prisoners

In 2015, America had four times the number of prisoners since 1980, roughly from 500,000 to 2.2 million people. The United States today is five percent of the world population, yet it holds twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. 4.5 million people are on probation or parole in the US. Altogether, there is a total of about 6.8 million people under some form of correctional control. If one were to combine the number of people in prison and jail with those who are under parole or probation supervision, it would amount to one in every thirty-five adults, which is 2.8 percent of the correctional control population.

Jails depend on three main resources for operation which include the public, the local government, and the sheriff. Within the local power structure jails must compete for scarce resources with schools, hospitals, parks and other more popular facilities (Mays and Thompson, 1991). Prisons are maintained by the states or the federal government. Running a prison can be costly, so the logic behind prison fees is that

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 United States has an incarceration problem that personifies issues throughout the entire criminal justice system. "The United States, with just 5 percent of the world 's population, currently holds 25 percent of the world 's prisoners" (Khalek). This issue runs deeper than just incarceration; it permeates every level of the criminal justice system, from incarceration to probation. Many states have turned to private institutions in an attempt shed operating costs, while also increasing effectiveness throughout the criminal justice system. These acts can include anything from providing treatment programs to full blown management of the entire prison system. Overcrowding at prisons and the rising costs associated with them has led many states to turn to some form of privatization within the criminal justice system. However, privatizing the entire correction system would not be beneficial for the state, from both an ethical and a public policy standpoint.