In this day and age, There are five times as many people in jail as there were in the 1970s. Almost 5 percent of the population of the United States will go to prison at in point of their life. Conservatives believe that imprisonment reduces crime in two ways: it removes criminals from the public so they can not commit more crimes, and it also discourages people who would commit a crime as they consider the consequences. Unfortunately, neither of these outcomes have come to be true. In fact, mass incarceration and “tough on crime” laws have been extremely ineffective that instead of reducing crime, it increases it. There are several different ways to effectively reduce crime other than these two strategies, such as reforming certain policies …show more content…
These tactic was utilized by the United States to combat alcohol and drug abuse. Conservatives believe that the experience of prison, along with harsh sentences and punishments for minor crimes, serves to discourage prisoner who are released from breaking the law once again. In 2017, 1 in every 5 people in prison were locked up for a drug offense. 6.7 million people were under correctional supervision as of 2015. 3.7 million are on probation, 2.3 million are in correctional facilities, and 840,000 are on parole. 70 percent of people who in local jails are not convicted of any crime. What drives mass incarceration is state policy, as the number of people incarcerated by state prisons is over 1,250,000. People in local jails are about 750,000, and people in federal prisons are less than 250,000. The War on Drugs also contributed massively to high incarceration rates. New York, who has mostly ended their War on Drugs, have seen incarceration numbers plummet. In Oklahoma however, drug offenders share about 30 percent of their prison population. Ending the War on Drugs will not end mass incarceration alone. The federal government and a handful of states have successfully reduced their incarcerated populations by reforming their drug policies, and these can also work with other policies as …show more content…
Longer sentences can also lead to overcrowding, which prevents prisoners access to rehabilitative programs have have a greater chance that mental health issues will worsen for these prisoners. Many other states have create similar innovative programs to lower incarceration and crime rates. Legislation in Texas for example provided $241 million dollars to develop many different alternatives to prison, including additional substance abuse treatment beds, drug courts, and mental illness treatment programs. Another state is South Carolina, who put an end to its mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession and also expanded prison alternative and parole eligibility. Similar to this, the state of New Jersey lowered its prison population by upgrading its parole process and putting an increase on how flexible sentencing of low-level drug offenders is. As well as helping to reduce crime, these measures have also proven to give in major savings. To encourage the rest of the country to follow in these states footsteps, experts are pleading for the passing of the Reverse Mass Incarceration Act, which would give states incentives to reduce their prison rates and population. This act would provide $20 billion dollars
3 Strikes – You’re Out! What is the best way to lower crime in the United States? Something that could put a stop to those who continue to commit violent crimes? The Three Strikes Policy was created for that specific purpose.
Plainly put, incarceration is the state of imprisonment or confinement to prison. Yet, there is more to incarceration than meets the eye. The public knows that when an individual commits a crime that individual is arrested, brought to trial, if guilty he or she is incarcerated, and then released. However, no one ever really questions what occurs between the initial day of incarceration and an individual's release. The memoir, Orange is the New Black:
The first step is for a better State and Federal Representation in the Government. The United States prison population changed after President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs in the 1970’s. The United States prisons around the whole country are overcrowded due to the War on Drugs and the 3x law. Many prisoners have been arrested for drug
War on drugs, a campaign for the prohibition of drugs using military aid and military intervention gave birth to mass incarceration. Unfortunately, the consequences of this campaign targeted minorities and people of color, who are in disadvantage. Mass incarceration promotes devastating effects in society, such as racial inequality and poverty. Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar is the author of “The New Jim Crow” Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. This book purposed to educate people about of mass incarceration that originated due to the war on the drug's movement, as well as to point out the racist system.
In 2010, historian Heather Thompson published the paper, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History. Within this comprehensive article, Thompson analyzes the social and economic effects of mass incarceration in the last third of the twentieth-century, and explains why historians must take on this important aspect of American history. The three areas she analyzes concern mass incarceration and the origins of the urban crisis, the decline of the American Labor Movement, and the rise of the Right in postwar America. Not only did (does) mass incarceration permanently criminalize individuals in society and deter them from reaching their full potential, it also negatively impacted urban
When in actuality the purpose is to rehabilitate and lower the percentage of inmates committing a crime upon release. To teach skills in order to less likely land back into prison which would further the issue of overcrowding. Some Americans believe overcrowding prisons is fair because criminals are not entitled while inmates live better than a lot of lower income members of society due to their access to healthcare. Many claim that criminals should not be comfortable that taxpayers are paying for them to be sheltered, fed, and clothed. That the $30,000 average per inmate to keep them incarcerated by funds from taxpayers is more than enough.
A shift is happening in America. The pendulum is swinging from the ideals of get tough and mass incarceration. The swing has both positive and negative affects on the prison system. On the plus side, prison populations are decreasing. By shifting away from incarcerating any who break the law, there are fewer drug dealers and fewer violent offenders in the system.
2. Review and reform the criminal justice process as a whole from arrest to release and invest in crime prevention and reduction. 3. Divert minor cases out of the criminal justice system. 4.
In 1972, former President Richard Nixon made his infamous statements regarding crime and drug abuse. In this speech, he declared a war on crime and drugs and intended to decrease the number of people using drugs and the amount of crimes that were committed. Since this declaration, incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up by 500%, even though the amount of crime happening has gone down. One of the reasons why I feel our rates have risen, is because sometimes, we put people in jail when they don’t need to be there in the first place.
Pfaff mentions that most people are in prison for non- violent drug offendes. According to Lock In by John Pfaff, "there are 200,000 people make up only about 16 percent of state prisoners, but that number almost
The issue of prison overcrowding has been an increasing in America. There are about 2.2 million Americans in jail or prison. The number of people in prison have gotten so large that about one in every 100 adults are behind bars. The increase in inmate population in the United States is a concern to me because some of these people have committed non-violent crimes or have drug related crimes. These people should be placed in rehabilitation centers or be counseled about drug distributing.
a mandatory minimum number of years in prison). The consequences of the United States’ late-twentieth-century obsession with mass incarceration and extreme, inhumane penalties are well-documented. From 1930 to 1975, the average incarceration rate was 106 people per 100,000 adults in the population. Between 1975 and 2011, the incarceration rate rose to 743 per 100,000 adults in the population—the highest incarceration rate in the world—with the total number of people incarcerated in jails and prisons across the country now surpassing 2.3 million.
The Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison Program is another attempt to provide better treatment for people who are convicted. The study showed that drug offenders who underwent a treatment program outside of prison had a 26 percent less rate of re-arrest after two years than a control group that was sent to prison (Justice Policy Institute, 2010). Rehabilitative programs like the Second Chance Act and the Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison Program has shown to growth and positive
In agreement with The Sentencing Project (2004), there has been a 500% increase over the past forty years; leading to overcrowding and concerns regarding inmates and correctional officer’s safety. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2015), prison population has increased an average of 1.8% from 2004 to 2013 with a recent decrease of 2.5% into 2014. The federal prison population decreased by over five-thousand inmates from 2013 to 2014. Over half of the prison population was serving time for drug offenses in 2014. The estimated one million prisoners in 2014 represent the smallest total prison population since 2005.
According to Phelps (2013), as from 1998 to 2007 states that had the greatest increases in incarceration rates failed to observe a corresponding drop in crime rates. On the other hands, states such as New York, Texas, New Jersey and North and South Carolina that lowered their incarceration rates in favor of community corrections programs experienced a drop in crime rates (p.53). Incarceration has also failed in correcting prisoners. Most of the prisoners always go back to committing crimes once released from prison. It has led to a rise in the recidivism rates of prisoners.