...Overcrowding in Prisons By Wendy Michaud PRES111 ~ Unit 2 IP American InterContinental University April 1, 2012 Abstract I think we are somewhat aware of the overcrowding in jails and prisons. There are more people incarcerated than we have room for in the United States. Although some states are far worse off than others this is a serious problem none the less. There are plans to fix this problem but not at the speed people would like. Topic: Overcrowded prisons are a problem for many different reasons. Most people are already aware of this problem, either they read it in a newspaper or saw it somewhere on the television. This is not just a local problem, it is almost everywhere. Are there reasons why this continues to happen, and has this situation improved through out the years? Are there things us as a society can do to change overcrowding in prisons? These are questions we should ask ourselves considering tax payers are the people that pay the most for food, shelter, and medical care for all the prisoners that are incarcerated. In the United States prisons the recidivism rate is amazingly high. In 1994, the biggest study of prisoner recidivism that has been ever been completed in the United States proved that, of nearly 300,000 adult prisoners who were released in 15 different states, 67.5 percent were arrested again within...
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...changed dramatically and that movements up and down in the incarceration rate have not correlated with crime rate changes. (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HSP/is_1_3/ai_66678533/) Criminal activities among Americans are on a constant rise compared to other parts of the world, leading to overcrowding in prisons. The contributing factor to this notion could be strict punishments for minor crimes, some pertaining to racial profiling. According to Hernandez (March-April 2009), African Americans represent nearly half of the prison population. The “war on drugs” has made a significant impact on the prison population, particularly within the African American communities. The war on drugs is aimed at reducing the supply and demand for drugs within the United States. The program focuses on stricter punishments for those who deal drugs and for those who use them. According to research conducted by Shaw (2000), African-Americans account for about 14 percent of the nation's drug users, yet they make up 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted for drug possession, and 74 percent of those sentenced to serve time. To prevent overcrowding in prison, non violent...
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...All prisons in the United States are overcrowded and understaffed. There is little emphasizes placed on rehabilitation. The jail and prison increase happen to be storage sitting room for criminals. Many who are repeat offenders or drug addicts? The way the criminals are let out of jail and allowed back into the general public can lead to many of them habitual to a life of crime and therefore, becoming an individual of the many repeat offenders. In many cases the offender is released without any directions. One of the main reasons that prisons have become overcrowded is that crime control strategies and legislative changes have fought and won to have longer sentences. These approaches have incarcerated people for longer periods of time with almost no chance or possibility for early release. The exact cost is not associated with the overcrowding; we can look at present costs incurred in prison and anticipate their increase as the system takes on more and additional inmates. When looking at the cost of overcrowding, we not only have to look at the cost to taxpayers per inmate but also construction cost needed to build the new prisons to relieve the overcrowding. The operating cost for a prison over its life span cost about fifteen to twenty times the original construction cost. Overcrowding causes serious deprivation in the quality of life for everyone in a correctional institution. Overcrowding also causes litigation's that force the federal and state prisons to build new...
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...work in its field of correctional officers to be the most challenging and frustrating component of criminal justice. There is the challenge of managing the inmates daily as well as the frustrations of inevitable mismanagement at attempting to accomplish multiple goals. New challenges present themselves every day. In a very real sense, employees in a correctional system are doing time the same as the inmates are doing time. It's easy to conduct a trial and sentence somebody (Alighieri, 2004). What corrections find more difficult is what to do with these inmates after they have been sentenced for five, ten and life in prison. Much of corrections is completed is a big range because of its endless amount of prisoners that are sentenced to prison each day. An issue that also occurs in corrections is the cost of operating a correctional facility. To operate a prison each year it can cost approximately thirty billion dollars. This includes correctional officer workers, administrations that work in the correctional facility. Housing, feeding, and clothing an inmate can start from twenty thousand dollars a year and the number can grow to almost thirty thousand, all of the funds are provided from tax payers. Therefore with all of these numbers in place to pay workers and take care of the inmates, many correctional facilities continue to cut employment to save money, and with cutting money the job loads are extremely heavier on correctional workers because they must work harder, and...
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...Overcrowded prisons are a huge issue that have been plaguing the United States for quite a few years now. There is no certain cause for the overcrowding in our prisons, however there are many suspected reasons believed to be causing the overcrowding. In order to really begin fixing the problem, concern must be given to each and every one of these causes. Overcrowding in prisons is a serious issue because it affects millions of people in the U.S., not just prisoners, but taxpayers and prison staff as well. Illinois, in particular, is suffering from overcrowded prisons quite severely. Nearly every prison in the state is overcrowded. In order to solve this increasingly serious problem, many steps must be taken to begin prison reform and to begin living in a country in which the way we punish our criminals makes more sense and is more effective than how it is today. Everyone seems to know someone that is in prison these days, whether the person has committed a serious, violent crime, or just got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, they still end up in some sort of prison facility. In fact the U.S.’s rate of incarceration is 455 people per every 100,000 people (Smolowe, 1994). To put that in perspective, it is the highest rate of incarceration compared to any other country in the world. Even South Africa, our close second, only imprisons 311 people per ever 100,000 (Smolowe, 1994). Due to the harsh punishment of imprisonment for even the most minor...
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...Prison Overcrowding in the United States First, we need to discuss the causes of prison overcrowding before we dive into potential solutions. The main obvious cause is fluctuating crime rates, the increase in the crime rates, in the United States leads more people to being locked up in prison, causing prison populations to sky rocket. Another main cause is changes to the laws, when changes are made, making the penalties higher, it causes people who might just go to jail for their crime, to end up in the prison system. Another serious issue that the United States prison system has is its return rate, with high lapses of criminals in today’s society the U.S has a 60% return rate. This rate cannot be tolerated, we as a society need to do something...
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...Society Prisons are facilities to keep convicted criminals from committing crimes and to rehabilitate offenders while keeping them isolated from society. As there are more crimes committed, there are more criminals in this world causing prison facilities to overcrowd. In turn, this costs the government a significant amount of money to keep these prisoners maintained. One of the main reasons for why many prisons have become so overcrowded is because of many state laws and many parole practices. The need for an alternative route for prisoners has grown immensely. Some examples of alternative routes include parole, community service, and house arrest. Alternatives can reduce the amount of criminals in a prison facility and can help the community tremendously. The use of alternatives can not only help us as citizens, but also give prisoners another way of life. Prison systems should help society and resolve the prison from overcrowding by considering alternatives that currently exist and by considering newly proposed ideas. Prison Growth There are crimes being committed everyday and there is nothing to do to keep those crimes from being committed those crimes. As there are more crimes being committed, this means there are more and more criminals being caught by police officials. Then, those criminals are booked into a facility where they cannot commit those crimes again for the period of their sentencing. As more and more criminals are being caught, this causes prison facilities...
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...Plan to Improve Correctional Facilities Patricia Saylor Dexter Levin Corrections November 10, 2013 In general, rehabilitation programs have been effective in reducing recidivism among prison convicts since they are mostly focused on treating the criminal causing behavior of prisoners by eliminating completely the factors or circumstances that drive them to commit criminal acts. Criminologists such as Martinson who conducted research on the effectiveness of rehabilitative programs such as educational, community based and transcendental programs noted that rehabilitative programs had a higher efficacy when they were oriented towards providing treatment to prison convicts so as to reduce recidivism. Martinson noted that both the educational and transcendental rehabilitative programs were designed to provide prisoners with life skills that they could use to manage their criminal causing behavior as well as equip them with technical skills that would improve the quality of their lives (Prison conditions, 2013). Rehabilitative programs that are focused on the principles of effective intervention are able to target the known factors of recidivism thereby necessitating change and also enabling the incorporation of cognitive or behavioral treatments to reinforce the behavior of the criminal offender by eliminating criminal thinking patterns. Principles of effective intervention ensure that rehabilitative programs are able to take into account the various characteristics of offenders...
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...In the early years before the great American Revolution, imprisoning of individuals who had done wrong in the United States of America was not possible as the system had not come into effect like other places such as the United Kingdom. When the idea of incarceration came in the US, it came in three major eras, and this was slightly before the beginning of the American Revolution as stated before. “The initial stage or age involved putting into prisons and even rehabilitating persons who were involved in any crime and during this time the American Civil War was still in progress. This era was commonly referred to as the time of Jacksonian (Roth 97)”. It was followed by a period where some new ideas and methodologies became useful, and these changes came immediately after the war. It was known as the Progressive era, an idea such as probation unspecified sentencing came into place. Then significant changes in American Penal continued to be observed up to today. A lot had changed in the US Penal system as compared to what it was in the early years when this practice was being practiced for the first time. “When America was being colonized by the British, the slaves who were brought in the form of prisoners and laborers were shipped in America using the Atlantic Ocean (Rothman 76)”. It became the first major method of imprisoning and it evolved to later being known as the prisoner trade. This was around the 1660s onwards, and thousands of people were moved to America by the English...
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...War on Drugs and Prison Overcrowding Thomas K Anderson University of Memphis Prison overcrowding has been a social phenomenon that has led to a variety of reforms. One of the major causes for overcrowding in the prison systems today began back in the early 1970’s, when President Nixon declared War on Drugs. There were dramatic increases in the prison population in the 1980’s and 1990’s. These increases were projected due to trends of harsh punishments. Political leaders were influential in these trends as they created mandatory sentencing guidelines. Currently 50.1% of all offenders that are incarcerated in the Federal Prison System are due to drug offenses. That total accounts for 98,554 individuals, many of whom are serving time for a nonviolent offense or first time offenses. The second largest cause for overcrowding in the prison are immigration related crimes, which still only accounts for 10.6% or 20,862 of the individuals. In June of 1971, President Nixon declared a war on drugs, which did not go over too well because he and everyone else had differing views on how to handle the problems being created due to the increase of drug use. Because of the increasing of the prison population, a reform was created to offer treatment for drug abuse; of course this did not take place since it was a contradiction of current drug policies. Unfortunately, the end result of Nixon’s plan did not stop the problem of drugs, but only caused...
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...Prison overcrowding and the effects it has on the quality of the housing and care for inmates has been a problem in the United States since the beginning of their existence. Particularly in inmates with physical or mental disabilities (Newman, Scott 549.). Many believe this overcrowding has led to less than adequate infirmary conditions, longer wait times, if any, for medical and psychiatric treatment and processing, leading to many civil lawsuits alleging abuses to the 8th Amendment. Although lowering prison populations theoretically seems like an easy fix solution, the reality is that law enforcement is not generally trained to assess medical or psychiatric situations. Additionally, more than half of the prison population is filled with inmates with some sort of mental or substance abuse disorder (Horne, Newman, 547). To help fix this problem it seems that Crisis intervention training should be taught to all law enforcement departments to help identify individuals suffering from mental illness versus a violent offender. This would help reduce the number of mentally ill patients being arrested, keeping the overall prison population down. In California, prisons have been at nearly...
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...Paper Every day, all across America, prisons are facing an overcrowding problem. The prisons are receiving more inmates than they can handle. Once in jail or prison an inmate can be released or given parole. When arrested you can be sent to jail or prison or you can be given probation. This leaves us to wonder, what happen between prison and probation. Over the past thirty years, other sanctions have been used to fill the gap between prison and probation; this has led to an expansion of many formal community corrections (Foster, 2006). Community corrections are sanctions that are imposed on inmates that occur in a community setting outside of prison or jails. They are usually enforced by the court or agencies that have legal authority over the inmate. These programs are usually operated by probation agencies and parole agencies (Crime solutions, 2014). So how does these programs affect the community and do they really work? Thinking about having a bunch of criminal set free to serve under community supervision is kind of scary. Many people believe that they should stay in prison under lock and key, and not set free in the community. I believe that community corrections can affect the society in both positive and negative ways. The only negative is that if they let out an inmate and they reoffend. A positive is that, it can save the community money because it is cheaper to have them be free than to have to pay to keep them in prison. Secondly some community corrections...
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...all been taught about the possibility of being sent to jail or prison for any crimes we commit. While not all crimes end with incarceration, it is common knowledge that there will be some form of punishment for any crimes that we may commit. When it comes to punishment for crimes, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world when compared to the rates of other countries. The current incarceration rate in the United States is more than four times than the world average with some Individual states imprisoning up to six times more people than individual counties with a comparable population (National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2012). The Incarceration rate for countries with populations comparable to that of the United States is around 100 prisoners for every 100,00 people, however, The United States has a rate that is about 500 per every 100,000 people (Population Reference Bureau, 2012). The jail population within the United States is made up of mostly Males making up more than 90 percent of the population while females make up 10 percent of the population but that number is also steadily rising. The number of women that have been incarcerated has seen a dramatic increase rising from a little over 15,000 in 1980 to close to 118,000 in 2010 (The Sentencing Project, 2012). Many view prison as a place to impose punishments for those to have committed crimes but the original philosophy of prison was to rehabilitate those offenders to prepare them for life...
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...and to keep dangerous people away from society.• Some prisons also have job training, a way for prisoners to finish school, and a way for them to learn to change their behaviors. Recidivism- continually returning back to prison.• The prisoners with the highest risk of returning to jail are robbers, burglars, larcenists, and motor vehicle thieves. Minimum and medium security- an individual has access to the basic needs in the prison. They aren’t as closely watched as the other levels of security.• Close security- Prisoners are locked up in cells and are searched for weapons, drugs or anything harmful. They are also able to go to an exercise yard from time to time. Minimum...
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...Jail and Prison Mary A. Webster CJA/204 November 9, 2014 MARY ELLEN DE FRIAS Jail and Prison There is a deference between jail and prison. The federal government is in charge of the prison system in the United States where local and state governments are in charge of jails. There is many different types of prisons, where there is only one type of jail. The United States has an issue of over crowed prisons and jails. This in turn has led to many different kinds of prison violence which has but both the inmates and the correctional offices in danger. Two of the ways the government use to reduce prison and jail populations are probation and parole. It is important that the government finds other a ways to reduce the populations of the jails and prisons. In the federal government, there is several deferent types of prisons such as federal prison camps, federal correctional institutions, low security facilities, medium security facilities, high security prisons and administrative maximum (ADMAX) facility. (University of Phoenix, 2014) (Schmalleger, F, 2011) Then there is state and local jails that house prisoners with a sentence that is typically a year or less. (Schmalleger, F, 2011) These jails are low security where prisons can be anywhere from low security to maximum security. In Martinsburg WV, there is the Eastern Regional Jail, and then only a few hours away there is a high security U.S. Penitentiary Known as USP Hazelton, which is located in Hazelton WV. ("The Eastern Regional...
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