We Need A New Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system focuses more on criminalization and incarceration than it does on rehabilitation. The United States of America wins the award for the highest incarceration rate in the world with over 2.3 million people in correctional facilities. America itself contains only about five percent of the world population, but accounts for twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners (American Civil Liberties Union). With a longstanding history of mass incarceration and

No matter how you look at it, the prison system within the US holds too many people without valid reason. The last decade has seen a lot of states cut down on crime while also cutting down on their prison populations. In the years between 1999 and 2012, for example, both New York and New Jersey cut their prison populations by 30%, and crime rates fell “faster than they did nationally.”

People in The United States have been affected by the prison system, it has saved many lives, but on the other hand, people have prosecuted for minor crimes, to end up spending a lot of time in jail, which breaks apart families for far too long, it also creates a big rift between the people of this fine nation and their distrust of the law. Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan has issued a law that has cut funding for the mental institutions in the United states as called the deinstitutionalization of mental health, and to show ways of how we can bring our mental health system into place. Also in the same era laws have been put in place to put harsher laws on drug offenders called mandatory minimum sentencing, some people like non-violent, first-time drug offender are being treated the same way as a drug lord, and a way that we can fix that is push laws in congress to loosen minimum sentencing. Not to forget to mention the death penalty, how tax payers are wasting our money on keep prisoners on death row. Having a poor mental health system, strict mandatory minimum sentencing, racial bias in our prisons, and death penalty laws has led people to enter our prison system wrongfully. By fixing those rules we can help our society grow, and achieve greatness by doing right to our prison system.

As of the end of 2015, there were 1,526,800 prisoners in the United States being held in state or federal correctional facilities. Every year, thousands of people are released from jail or prison. Most people who are incarcerated today will eventually be released. Most of these individuals return to a life of freedom without the skills they need to survive. Recidivism rates suggest that many of these individuals will re-offend within six months of release, and most will reoffend within three years. This is not because they’re bad people; it’s because they are trying to thrive in a system that sets them up to fail.

The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. The ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system is caused by mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism.

The United States of America has more people incarcerated than any other country on earth, a whopping 2,220,300 adults are currently locked behind bars. We have 500,000 more citizens locked up than China, a country 5 times our population run by an authoritarian government. From 1990 - 2000 the prison population increased by 1,000,000. The main reason for incarceration as a punishment in this country is rehabilitation, or so we have been told. In recent years an industry has developed that revolves around high incarceration rates and lengthy sentences, needless to say business is booming. The for-profit prison industry now makes millions off the backs of American inmates their families and every American taxpayer. The two largest

Once upon a time, Americans could proudly say that America was the land of freedom and opportunity. As the Pledge of Allegiance states, “One nation under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” However, under the current criminal justice system, more and more people lose their liberties because of the crimes they have committed. According to Roy Walmsley, a consultant of the United Nations and Associate of the International Center for prison studies, “In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represent about 4.4 percent of the world 's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world 's prisoners.” These people are not only prisoners, but they are also parents, sons, and daughters - the loved ones of families. The number of people that have been incarcerated also represents the number of families that have been shattered.

The prisons in America seem to cause more problems than assistance in today's society. The country's penal system is overcrowded, expensive, and some argue that is ineffective as well as inefficient. The costs to staff and support these facilities increase dramatically every year. Prisons, which are supposed to be correctional facilities, are currently filled with violence and hostility. These institutions are created to control crime by deterrence, incapacitating criminals, which protects society from potentially dangerous criminals, but it is hard to tell if this is being accomplished.

Today, the United States has more people incarcerated than ever before. More than 2 million people in the United States alone are in prison, three times the amount than before there were sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums (Bernick and Larkin). “The Federal Bureau of Prisons is overcrowded, operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity and housing a large population of non-violent drug offenders, at a significant cost to taxpayer” (Bernick and Larkin). Every year taxpayers are paying to keep inmates incarcerated. The average cost to keep one inmate in prison for a year is around $29,000. In state prisons alone, taxpayers spend over $50 billion dollars

The United State’s prison system was initially designed to punish and rehabilitate individuals whom were convicted of a felony or other serious offense. Inmates are sentenced for a certain amount of time, or the entirety of their life based on how serious of a crime that person has committed. The Idea of imprisoning a person as a form of punishment dates back to medieval times however, it wasn’t until right before the American Revolution humane prisons started appearing in this country. Today, prisons are more populated than they have ever been and are functioning not only as a place to reform people’s morals, but also as a highly profitable investment for the wealthy to exploit. The Prison system is so devoted to making

Florida International University, PhD in International Crime and Justice offers a rigorous criminal justice program with an idyllic location to study transnational crime. The PhD program is distinguished in the field of Criminal Justice with its unique specialization in human trafficking. Given these points the doctoral program offered by FIU aligns directly with my career aspirations. Using an ethnographic approach, I am seeking to explore the techniques used by perpetrators to recruit victims and the correlation between substance abuse coping mechanisms used by victims who endured atrocities faced in human trafficking. Furthermore, I will examine if preventive measures exist to reduce the percentage of victims continually recruited.

It is becoming a well-known fact that the United States is the world leader, not in education, but in the number of incarcerated persons. The United States of America claims to be the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” but more and more each day, the United States is becoming the “land of the jailed and the home of the criminal.” This epidemic of incarcerated persons is the result of one of the following things: 1. America is too much in love with the idea of segregating the good people and the bad people or 2. America has put too many people in jail and some of them could be released.

American Prisons poorly represent our criminal justice system; due to not have clearly outlined goals associated for its offenders. Also, look at the cost to lock up and house this country’s offenders, it has increased significantly over the past few decades. With the two above stated issues, we have a huge problem in America. Other countries look at our justice system as though we have got it figured out and, we may have a better idea of Justice than most countries, because, well we are no longer chopping off hands for stealing anymore. While there are some prisons that are too harsh, there are some that make life way too easy. Therefore, we must create a baseline for all prisons in this country. In order to decrease the percentages of repeat offenders and expedite the out-processing of small time criminals, American prisons are in dire need of help, especially

Today, it seems that no matter how many criminals suffer in prison, thousands of crimes are committed each year. Many reformers have noticed this occurrence, and recognize the debatable fallacies of the prison system. Prisons have changed over time to better suit the needs of each generation, and many believe prisons today need to adjust.

The prison system is unsuccessful and a waste of tax payers money. Prisons were not meant to be a form of punishment, rather prison was originally a containment cell meant to hold the criminals until a punishment could be decided (Desoriente0). Later on when the church got powerful, prisons were then used to punish members of the church when they sinned or broke the law in order to avoid a physical punishment the inmates would be sent into solitary to pray and think about their actions for a short time (Desoriente0). Today on the other hand society decided to make prison the punishment for most crimes however, is locking up someone for a few years the most effective way of dealing with criminals. Prisons affect all Americans regardless of criminal history due to the fact that tax payers dollars pay for the prisons and if the justice system fails citizens may be endanger. Prisons affect the criminals as well because if they don’t rehabilitate correctly they may be returning as soon as they are released. Prisons try to handle the recidivism problem however lack the authority and resources to stop rehabilitate criminals. When convicts don’t get the proper help that is needed they are set up to fail and eventually go back to prison. Due to lack of programs, people who are released from prisons have a high percent chance of returning to prison because of parole violation, repeat offenses, new offenses, or complication that originated in prison.