Incarceration Of Prisons

The article talks about how a man named, Rodney Roberts was incarcerated for kidnapping and rape, which he said that he didn't commit. Roberts states, “Seventeen years I was gone. I had to understand and process the changes to society, the technology, the cultural changes, the geographical changes” (Roberts). Once you are free from jail, you have to realize that things in the community are not going to be the same anymore. You are going to come across things that you are not use to anymore, but think about if this would happen while in jail.

Over the past forty years the increased of mass incarceration within the Federal Bureau of Prisons has increased more than 700 percent since the 1970’s, between the different type of ethnicity. Billions of dollars have spent to house offenders and to maintain their everyday life from rehabilitation programs, academic education, vocational training, substance abuse programs and medical care. The cost of incarceration climbs according to the level of security based on violent and non-violent crimes. Fewer staff is required in minimum and medium-security prisons that house low-level offenders. Incarceration is likely to serves as one indicator of other co-occurring risks and vulnerabilities that makes families particularly fragile. Mass incarceration is likely to increase if awareness is not implicated to reduce the rate of imprisonment and broken families to take back their communities and reclaim their hope for the future.

The incarceration of individuals usually has a bad outcome not only for the offender, but also the offender family. Being incarcerated steals the individual’s life and opportunity of being a productive citizens. Implementing alternatives will reduce the likelihood of overcrowding. That is because alternatives will give offenders the opportunity to attend a

As we all know – there are tons of social issues within the entire world that Criminal Justice Practitioners deal with, most likely, on a daily basis. One of the many social issues I’ve chosen is Prison Overcrowding.

“From 1978 to 2014, our prison population has risen 408%, one in 110 adults are incarcerated in a prison or local jail in the U.S. This marks the highest rate of imprisonment in American history” (Washington Post). With a prison system like ours, overcrowding of facilities has now become a financial burden, the question is for who has it became a burden for?

There are over two million people in the United States behind bars. Incarceration in the US is one of the main forms of punishment that leads nothing after for people when getting out. Every state, city, country, all have laws we citizens obey and go by to do best for our country, but what happens someone violates the law? According to Google’s definition of a felony, it says that felony means, “a crime, typically one involving violence, regarded as more serious than a misdemeanor, and usually punishable by imprisonment for more than one year or by death”. Getting caught by the law, being arrested, doing time in jail makes you automatically a felon once your name is in the system. What’s promised after being in jail is something no one should experience. With this in mind, people’s human rights are being taken away from the minute their hands and arms are behind in cuffs. For this reason, what our human rights mean is, “The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are considered to be entitled, often held to include the rights to life, liberty, equality, and a fair trial,freedom from slavery and torture, and freedom of thought and expression” ( Houghton Mifflin).

Currently the United States holds the leading position for having the largest prison population in the world. Considering this, the cost of re-incarcerating offenders after their release remains notably high to U.S Americans and our society. Recidivism is known as the reimprisonment of an individual that is released from prison but then later returns for being convicted of a new crime. However, there is essential data that proves the drastic reduction in recidivism through academic and vocational studies. Each year, it cost twice as much to provide a room and food for inmates than it would just to educate these prisoners.

Incarceration has been a pending issue amongst western civilization’s history for some time and today continues to raise a wide range of important questions. Incarceration of individuals have become a tremendous tax payer concern along with the incarceration of the drug war, convictions of street gangs, and the rest of the individuals who have broken the law and harmed other innocent individuals. However, the question is always a concern of men incarceration and hardly addressed of women being incarcerated. Not to say that what men can do women can do better, but studies have shown a drastic increase in women becoming incarcerated throughout a range of years. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures research on Children Of Incarcerated Parents by Steve Christian, a study by national survey had reported in August 2008, that during that time, the number of children with a mother in prison increased by 131 percent, from 63,900 to 147,400 (Christian, 2009). Society has always drawn its focus on convicts constantly trying to pin a wrong on an individual’s plate of life, but has never become curious to ask why an individual has become incarcerated and whom it has affected. The drastic increase of women becoming incarcerated have come from numerous of backgrounds in which their choices have led to affect their children as well as their children’s development and in addition affected their own development.

There are over 2million people incarcerated today in the United States and Statistics show that the rates every

According to Alexander, so many black men are missing because they are under the criminal justice system. In today’s society, there has been a mass incarceration of black men due to the federal program called the war on drugs. Because of this mass incarceration, a lot of black men are far from home without being able to raise their children. “Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages” (Alexander 738). African Americans were victims of slavery in the past; however, in today’s society the number of black men in prison is even bigger than the black men enslaved in the past. “More black men are imprisoned today than at any other moment in our nation’s history” (Alexander 740). The war on drugs makes this possible because

The United States of America is phrased by many, as being “the land of the free.” Yet, the Unites States currently has the highest per capita prison population than any other country. The United States makes up only 5% of the world’s population and of that 5%, 25% of our overall nation’s population is currently incarcerated. A few factors that attribute to our high rates of incarceration include, sentencing laws: such as mandatory- minimum sentencing, lack of initial deterrence from crime, the war on drugs and the presence of recidivism. With our ever growing incarceration rates and the cost of housing individual offenders averaging $22,000 a criminal justice agenda. Recidivism refers to a person 's relapse into criminal behavior resulting in rearrests, reconviction or return to prison with or without a new sentence during a three-year period following the prisoner 's release (National Institute of Justice.) Many programs have been implemented in our prison system to help reduce the recidivism rates. Programs such as educational/ vocational programming, reentry programs, substance abuse programs and subsidized employment are among many programs in which have been proven effective. Yet, due to costs deficits, the clock is ticking to find evidence based programs to invest in. So, the question currently being sought after is, which method is most effective in reducing recidivism rates?

When it came to prisoners it would have been less costly to have alternative punishments or other treatments that could be involved in the community, but if you incarcerate the inmate then it makes them more likely to reoffend, and by this process it is creating more cost in the future. When it comes to women “Incarcerating women, in particular, increases the social cost of prisons because someone has to pay to take care of the children, and furthermore, when mothers do not care for their children personally, the kids are more likely to become offenders in the future” (Pryce, Vicky 2013 Prisonomics: Behind Bars in Britain's Failing Prisons. London: Biteback , 336 pp). But if we were to invest money into other ideas that would give better

America has a major problem with overcrowding in its prisons, and action needs to be taken. Since 1970, the inmate population in the United States has increased over 700%, far greater than the general population as a whole. This has led to declining quality of life within the prison system including 8th Amendment violations and it represents a needless drain on state finances. There is simply no value in keeping non-violent convicts in the prison system, sometimes for years. The costs are high, and there is very little benefit to America. The justice system needs to be overhauled to relieve the massive crowding in US prisons.

Many different states have begun sending nonviolent drug offenders to various kinds of drug treatment program the state offers. By doing this, it has significantly reduced the problems with overcrowding. If an individual is arrested and charged with simple possession of a drug and no other crime is being commented, then this person is doing no harm to anyone else. They should be given the opportunity to try and make a change in their life and beat the addiction. Instead, if this person is thrown into jail, they are still going to be an addict with a criminal record now and will not be able to be a contributing member of society. (Everett 1 ).

One major problem of prison overcrowding is the effect it has on prison organizational stability. The more prisoners and people put in jail have made it harder for prison guards and staff to monitor and control them. The entire prison system must make enormous changes in order to accommodate for the number of inmates versus the number of prison guards (O’Leary). This often results in a misclassification of offenders. Many who come through the system are classified based on the amount of space available instead of on the security level and programs that would be most suitable for them (Howard). “It is not uncommon to find inmates, classified as medium security, incarcerated in maximum security institutions, while other inmates are in medium security who were previously considered candidates for maximum security” (Howard). Misclassifying offenders often leads to “slow progress through the corrections system as well as a slow exit” (Howard). This in turn only prolongs and increases the overcrowding problem (Howard). The corrections programs should be reformed to meet the needs of the inmates rather than the inmates having to adjust to meet the requirements of the system. Offenders need to be on specific rehabilitation programs that are customized to fit their needs, such as alcohol and drug abuse programs and so forth.