Houston Community College System Prison Overcrowding Paper

User Generated

Tveyl20

Law

Houston Community College System

Description

Major Research Assignment

The course will culminate in your producing a 10–15 pages well written and researched paper on a topic in criminal justice of your choosing. Your paper must be a critical analysis of your chosen topic, based in the appropriate theory and methodology, with summary and description kept to a bare minimum. The paper will be a demonstration of your understanding of, and ability to comply with, APA (6th Ed.) formatting guidelines, library research, and plagiarism-free writing. Your paper should include a title page, an abstract, a references page, and at least ten academic sources. The sources should be properly listed on the references page and correctly cited / referenced throughout the text of your literature review.

THIS IS THE COMMENT I HAD FOR THE LITERATURE REVIEW

The introduction needs a thesis statement and outline of the paper. The literature review should flow so remove bold reference at the start of each.

You did a good job summarizing the various articles separately but you need to look for themes, similarities, contradictions across the articles. For the final paperwork on weaving the literature together to make an argument.

* I will upload the document with the comments made and also the first thesis document.

This is now the final Paper.

Your paper must be a critical analysis of your chosen topic, based in the appropriate theory and methodology, with summary and description kept to a bare minimum. All written work submitted must be in APA format and have appropriate citations.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

Running head: PRISON OVERCROWDING 1 Prison overcrowding is the scenario whereby the number of prisoners exceeds the prison’s capacity. This has become a defining feature of American prisons. America has the most overcrowded prison facilities in the world. When the prison is overcrowded, there is the overuse of the prison facilities. This leads to poor prison conditions and subsequently degrading treatment of prisoners. My research shows how sentencing policies contribute to prison overcrowding. The current criminal sentencing policies used in America is one of the contributors to congestion in prison. The justice system in America regards imprisonment as the most common mode of punishment. In this regard, courts are sending many people to prison. Unfortunately, they are imposing longer sentences on most inmates (MacDonald, 2018). With many prisoners serving for longer periods, there will be no space for new inmates. However, since more inmates are being sent to prison, the prisons are forced to accommodate more people than their capacity allows. The consequence of this is prison overcrowding. Prisons, as one of the correctional institutions, play a fundamental role in criminal justice (Hanna, 2016). It acts as the turning point of the offenders or lawbreakers to law-abiding citizens. However, when there is something that brings a disconnection, the crime rate increases instead of declining. This is contrary to what the justice system is trying to do. The issue of prison overcrowding is of great concern to all stakeholders of the justice system. The prison conditions deteriorate when there is overcrowding in prison (Durose, 2019). It becomes difficult for prison personnel or correctional professionals to handle the inmates. Consequently, rehabilitation does not take place effectively. On the government’s side, prison overcrowding causes an increase in incarceration costs. In this regard, the government is forced to make higher budgetary allocation on the prisons. The money PRISON OVERCROWDING 2 that could have been used for development purposes is used in prison. Citizens, as part of the stakeholders, bear the burden of the increased cost of incarceration. Sentencing policies are the leading contributors of prison overcrowding in America. Thesis Statement: Sentencing policies are the leading contributors of prison overcrowding in America. Bibliography Durose, O. (2019). The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Leaving Proportionality Behind. Undergraduate Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2(1), 1-30. Punishment is meant to have crime reducing effects. However, with the unprecedented increase in prison overcrowding in America, incarceration no longer reduces crime. Hanna, P. (2016). Human Cattle: Prison Overpopulation and the Political Economy of Mass Incarceration. Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science, 4(3), 41-60. The mass incarceration that America is currently facing is unsustainable. With prison overcrowding, the costs of maintaining prisons have increased, thus outweighing incarceration benefits. Hopwood, S. (2019). The Effort to Reform the Federal Criminal Justice System. The Yale Law Journal, 128, 100-115. PRISON OVERCROWDING America's sentencing policy is the main cause of the unprecedented growth of incarceration America is currently facing. Therefore, sentencing reforms can effectively address prison overcrowding. MacDonald, M. (2018). Overcrowding and its impact on prison conditions and health. International Journal of Prisoner Health, 14(2), 65-68. When prisons are overcrowded, they cannot adequately meet the inmates' food, accommodation, and health needs. As a result, inmates are forced to live under very inhumane conditions. Mauer, M. (2018). Long-term sentences: Time to reconsider the scale of punishment. UMKC Law Review, 87(1), 113-141. The criminal justice system is facing a high cost of incarceration because of the prevailing prison overcrowding. Sentencing reforms can help to address this endemic problem. 3 Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 2 Literature Review Introduction Incarcerations in America are rising at an alarming rate. This increase is reflected in the prison population. American prisons have changed substantially as a result of the increasing rate of incarceration. Most of the researchers have focused on the crime rate as the cause of the high incarceration rate. However, this is not the cause. The rate of incarceration has increased due to the changes in sentencing policies (Durose, 2019). In the last four decades, there has been a spike in incarceration. This coincides with the touch sentencing policies that the U.S. justice system has embraced during this time. These policies involve lengthy sentences for felony crimes. The government implemented these policies with the aim of increasing public safety. Felony offenders are dangerous to society. So, they should be kept away from the public to make the public safe. The only way to achieve this is by admitting them for longer sentences. Unfortunately, felony cases have been increasing. Thus, more new felony offenders are taken to prison. This has led to an increase in prison and jail population. In the 1970s, the prison and jail population was approximately 330,000 (Durose, 2019). However, today, it is above 2 million. Nevertheless, despite the increase, the crime rate is still increasing. To this end, policymakers are once again concerned with the extent to which mass incarceration enhances public safety. Three strikes is an example of tough sentencing policies. They have produced more crises than the solution. They were essentially assumed to be sending a message to society, discouraging them from committing a crime. Nonetheless, the people behind these policies have had goodwill. They have been implementing them as incapacitate and deterrent measures of crime. They hoped that the crime rate would decline. LITERATURE REVIEW 3 Beckett, K. (2018). Mass Incarceration and Its Discontents. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 47(1), 45-58. The lengthy prison terms have had minimal deterrent effects. These prison terms were essentially assumed to be sending a message to society and the criminals that certain criminal behaviors are not entertained. However, this message is no longer sent. Because of these measures' long application, the public has become used to it (Beckett, 2018). They see the prison terms as normal, just like others. Nonetheless, for a punishment to have deterrence effects, it must have two elements. One, it must have certainty. This implies that there must be proportionality between the punishment being imposed and the offense committed. In this regard, people who have committed more significant offenses should be imposed severer punishments. In this context, they should be increased for more years. However, there has been a lack of uniformity in sentencing. Some offenders have been subjected to shorter sentences despite having committed serious offenses. Other offenders have been subjected to longer sentences despite having committed minor offenses. This inconsistency in the application of incarceration has made lengthy prisons to have minimal deterrent effects. The public tends not to take imprisonment seriously anymore. With this, the potential criminals cannot be discouraged from taking part in the crime. Similarly, the offenders will not take the duration they are serving incarceration to evaluate the cost and benefit of committing a crime. Instead, they become bitter about the state. In this regard, they are likely to re-offend once they are released. To sustain the lengthy prison duration, more resources are required. This is to cater for the food and healthcare of the offender while in prison. With the high level of incarceration present today, the incarceration cost has gone up. The available budget is not sufficient for caring for the new LITERATURE REVIEW 4 prison population. As a result, the criminal reducing effects of lengthy incarceration have diminished. Durose, O. (2019). The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Leaving Proportionality Behind. Undergraduate Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2(1), 1-30. Incarceration is one of the common forms of punishment used in the United States. The offenders are held in prison facilities away from the public, where they for a given period. Essentially, the time that people stay in prisons depends on the crime that they had committed. The rationale for incarceration is that it has crime-reducing effects on the offenders. Thus, when offenders are held in prison, their criminality diminishes. Incarceration serves two essential goals (Durose, 2019). These goals have crime reducing effects. First, incarceration serves the deterrence goal. It seeks to discourage people from doing certain crimes. In this regard, it reduces people’s offending. Incarceration brings suffering to people. The rationale of deterrence is that punishment makes people change their behaviors. Hanna, P. (2016). Human Cattle: Prison Overpopulation and the Political Economy of Mass Incarceration. Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science, 4(3), 41-60. During the incarceration, people see that the cost of punishment is higher than the cost of doing the crime. Hence, they avoid committing crimes anymore. Incarceration promotes both specific and general deterrence (Hanna, 2016). Specific deterrence applies to the person involved in the crime. Since the prison experience is harsh, the offender may not re-offend so as not to have such an experience again. General deterrence is also caused whereby people fear LITERATURE REVIEW 5 committing crimes after seeing what those who have committed a crime have gone through. Secondly, prison seeks to incapacitate criminals. This implies reducing their capability of committing a crime. When offenders are incarcerated, they will not be able to commit a crime until the duration of imprisonment ends. Thus, the longer the imprisonment term, the higher the incapacitation (Hanna, 2016). The rationale of incapacitation is that when offenders are imprisoned, they are mechanically removed from the societies. This removes their opportunity of committing a crime. Both incapacitation and deterrence goals are what culminates in crime reduction. Hopwood, S. (2019). The Effort to Reform the Federal Criminal Justice System. The Yale Law Journal, 128, 100-115. The long lengthy prison terms are counterproductive. Criminal justice has, over time, introduced lengthy prison terms for various federal offenses. Their aim of doing this has been to promote public safety. Unfortunately, public safety is increasingly diminishing. Presently, there is an upward trend in the crime rate in society. This decreases public safety since more people are being victimized. Certainly, the longer the offender stays in prison, the higher the chances of satisfying the deterrence and incapacitation goals (Hopwood, 2019). However, the lengthy sentences may not be appropriate because of the offender’s aging out. As the offender stays longer in prison, they get incapacitated automatically. They commit crimes at a young age. However, as they age out, they are not interested in crime. This is so because some crime is a matter of maturity. Others are as a result of peer influence. MacDonald, M. (2018). Overcrowding and its impact on prison conditions and health. International Journal of Prisoner Health, 14(2), 65-68. LITERATURE REVIEW 6 Decarceration strategies are the best approach to addressing prison overcrowding in America. These strategies aim to reduce the time served in prison and reduce the admission of inmates to prisons (MacDonald, 2018). The policy debate that should be initiated is how long the people who are sent to prison are kept, how many people are sent to prison, and the proportionality of the crimes they committed with the length of sentence they have been served. In this regard, prisons should admit the confirmed serial criminals only. This group of criminals is the one threatening public safety. Thus, the group should be locked to live away from the public. However, people charged with minor offenses, and no previous criminal record should not be taken to prison (MacDonald, 2018). Instead, they should be issued parole, probation, and community service as alternative sentencing. With regard to the proportionality of crime, only the people who have committed very serious offenses like the first degree of murder should be imposed lengthy sentences. When all this is done, the effectiveness of prisons will be restored. Subsequently, the prison goals will be achieved. More importantly, prison overcrowding will reduce. Most of the tough sentencing policies should be eliminated. The cost of implementing these policies exceeds the benefits that they bring to society. Mauer, M. (2018). Long-term sentences: Time to reconsider the scale of punishment. UMKC Law Review, 87(1), 113-141. To achieve the deterrent and incapacitation goals of prisons, there should be safe conditions in prisons. With overcrowded prisons, there is no safer environment in prisons. The prisoner’s health should be the first concern of the prison. However, with the current overcrowding situations, it is difficult to maintain safe conditions in prisons. In light of this, violent conditions and insanitary conditions have become the defining characteristics of contemporary American prisons (Mauer, 2018). These conditions are dangerous to the mental LITERATURE REVIEW 7 and physical well-being of the prisoners. Standard healthcare is provided in prison when the prison can reasonably accommodate the inmates. When this is the case, the resources and staff meant to provide mental healthcare will be sufficient. Subsequently, healthcare will be provided adequately, and the prisoners will benefit. However, when the prison is overcrowded, the resources and staff will not be enough. This has detrimental effects because some of the prisoners have serious medical problems. Other problems are mental health problems. When that is not addressed on time, serious complications develop (Hopwood, 2019). Moreover, infections in prison increase, whereby some prisoners die, and others survive. In this regard, the number of inmate’s death has been increasing. The increasingly poor conditions of American prisons can be attributed to these deaths. Other prisoners become depressed. Mostly, depressed prisoners resort to committing suicide. The deteriorating prison conditions can be attributed to the increasing suicide rate in prisons in America. Prisons also seek to change the offender’s criminal behavior using rehabilitation programs (Nowacki, 2018). However, rehabilitation cannot occur successfully in light of poor conditions. To achieve all the sentencing goals, the prisons must have standards that ensure the prisoner’s safety and access to food and basic healthcare. With prison overcrowding, ensuring these conditions is difficult since more resources are required. Nowacki, J. S. (2018). Federal Sentencing Guidelines and United States v. Booker: Social Context and Sentencing Disparity. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 29(1), 23-35. People in their mid-twenties and early thirties are highly likely to commit a crime. However, when they become aged, their criminality reduces (Nowacki, 2018). In this regard, there is no need to keep people in prison for so long when they have become of age. For instance, the rate of robbery is highest among people offenders in their twenties. Moreover, incarcerating the elderly is a burden to the government. Older adults have a lot of healthcare LITERATURE REVIEW 8 needs. They need specialized diets, medicine, and other critical services. Since they are in prison, the prison has to cater for all these costs (Nowacki, 2018). Moreover, when people stay in prison for a longer time, their health starts declining. All these have contributed to an increased person budget in America. Conclusion The ‘tough’ sentencing policies have caused the explosive growth of the prison population. With the paroles and community been made less common, incarceration has become increasingly popular. The immediate results are prison overcrowding. This is the main challenge that America’s justice system is trying to address now (Nowacki, 2018). Today, all the jails and prisons in America are full. Despite this, they are still admitting more inmates. Certainly, they have to admit them because more sentences continue being made. This situation is what is described as prison overcrowding. Since policy changes have caused it, it can only be addressed through a policy framework. Infrastructural solutions like expanding the prisons will not solve prison overcrowding. The new prisons and jails will soon be overcrowding. Thus, building more prisons would be wasting public money. One of the direct effects of prison overcrowding is violence in prison (Durose, 2019). Essentially, prison overcrowding makes people be close to one another. When people are close to one another, there are higher chances of a conflict. The inmates will compete for scarce resources at their disposal, like beddings and food (Mauer, 2018). Because of this, prison overcrowding has produced a culture of violence in prison. The violence has grown exponentially. When new inmates go to prison, they are introduced to this culture. Essentially, the physically strong and older inmates are the ones who are most violent. They victimize the new inmates. To some extent, violence causes injuries. This increases the incarceration further since the injured inmates have to get some treatment. This violence is LITERATURE REVIEW perpetual because the victimized inmate becomes a more violent criminal (Nowacki, 2018). He or she victimizes the new inmate in revenge. In line with this, violence has become a culture in American prisons. Prisons have tried to address it by keeping the offenders of different crimes separately. However, this has not been fruitful because the violence has been caused by prison overcrowding. Thus, the problem can only be addressed by solving prison overcrowding first. 9 LITERATURE REVIEW 10 Bibliography Beckett, K. (2018). Mass Incarceration and Its Discontents. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 47(1), 45-58. Durose, O. (2019). The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Leaving Proportionality Behind. Undergraduate Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2(1), 1-30. Hanna, P. (2016). Human Cattle: Prison Overpopulation and the Political Economy of Mass Incarceration. Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science, 4(3), 41-60. Hopwood, S. (2019). The Effort to Reform the Federal Criminal Justice System. The Yale Law Journal, 128, 100-115. MacDonald, M. (2018). Overcrowding and its impact on prison conditions and health. International Journal of Prisoner Health, 14(2), 65-68. Mauer, M. (2018). Long-term sentences: Time to reconsider the scale of punishment. UMKC Law Review, 87(1), 113-141. Nowacki, J. S. (2018). Federal Sentencing Guidelines and United States v. Booker: Social Context and Sentencing Disparity. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 29(1), 23-35.
Purchase answer to see full attachment
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Find attached

Outline

Prison Overcrowding
Format – Essay

Introduction


Overview

Part One

Introduction
➢ In the contemporary setting, prison overcrowding is a pertinent subject influencing the United
States justice system. All across the nation, the issue of prison overcrowding has deteriorated to
the extent of infringing on citizen constitutional civil rights. The war on drugs commenced during
the Nixon era espoused long-lasting effects in packed courtrooms and prison systems.
➢ Additionally, harsher penalties on come petty crimes are augmenting this problem. Consequently,
a limited number of public defenders, harsher sentences for minor offenses, and Sentencing
policies are the leading contributors of prison overcrowding in are increasingly resulting in the
United States correctional system's overstraining.
➢ Essentially, the US penal system requires legislation alterations that render new actions illegal.
For many years, the legislature and the criminal justice system have espoused a tough on crime
approach. Overstrained public defenders lack the resources and time to build a solid defense for
all their cases due to the augmented caseloads they encounter.
➢ Overcrowding emanates from the incapability of prisons facilities to accommodate or receive or
extra inmates. Consequently, authorities institute emergency measures to help deal with such
intricacies including emergency accommodation, or keeping offenders or prisoners police

stations. United States Prison Service Department affirms that overcrowding has become a
perpetual intricacy. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recommends the ideal
that prison facilities must espouse.
➢ Despite these recommendations, there is practically no methodical information or data obtainable
to facilitate the smooth evaluation of whether the facilities adhere to the set standards or assist in
comparing various facilities in different jurisdictions (UNODC, 2013). Furthermore, low data
exist indicating the perception of prisoners towards overcrowding.
➢ The lack of space that new inmates can occupy in correctional facilities has resulted in
overcrowding in these facilities. For instance, the past two decades have witnessed an over
operational capacity at Connecticut's prisons.
➢ There are societal issues that many of these criminals face that push them back into recidivism,
such as scarcity, a shortage of employment or education opportunities, drug or alcohol use and
abuse, exposure to criminal operators, mental illness, and racial disparity. The cycle of getting out
of jail or prison and going right back in creates a population increase and does not help reduce the
overpopulation of inmates. In Connecticut, leaders formed a committee to scrutinize why there is
such overcrowding in the state and what they could do to fix the problem.
➢ Consequently, vulnerability will haunt the definitive objective of safeguarding the public
(Connecticut General Assembly Office of Program Review and Investigations, 2000). Until a
solution to lower crime suffices, or authorities set aside funding for more prisons, or curb the
tough on crime stance's enthusiasm, it will be difficult to reduce the overpopulation of prisons in
the United States.
➢ Suppose the United States wants to thwart overpopulation and decrease crime. In that case,
authorities need to work more on rehabilitating the community rather than incarcerating them and
just letting them stay prison for years.
➢ Arguably, the federal government's policies since the 1970s have helped compound the problem
of overpopulation in the incarceration system. In June 1971, President Nixon declared war on

drugs. The president radically amplified the presence and magnitude of the federal drug control
agencies. Additionally, the president incorporated stringent measures, which enclosed
compulsory sentencing, and no-knock warrants.
➢ Correspondingly, the 1910s anti-marijuana laws in the South West and Midwest were directed at
Mexican Americans and immigrants. Nowadays, Latino and black communities are still subject to
wildly inconsistent drug enforcement and sentencing.
➢ Due to this, the United States has incarcerated a considerable percentage of its citizens compared
to any other jurisdiction in the world. Surprisingly, more than half of these incarcerations are
drug-related. In the 1980s, the United States had fifty thousand individuals in prison for drugrelated violations. Currently, the nation has more than half a million inmates.
➢ On the other hand, drugs remain extensively accessible, while treatment resources are inadequate.
Besides, the war on drugs has resulted in the defunding of other significant services and a loss of
billions of taxpayer’s funds. Furthermore, money channeled into drug enforcement has resulted in
the underfunding of severe crimes and left essential sectors like the education and health sectors
struggling to meet their obligations due to inadequate funding.
➢ Since then, the United States employed all the necessary means including erecting checkpoints,
patrols, using sniffer dogs, installing cameras, and heat sensors, motion detectors, drone aircraft.
Additionally, authorities even put up more than one thousand miles of steel beam, heavy mesh,
and concrete walls stretching from Texas to California (Associated Press, 2010).
➢ Another method could be to increase the accessibility, affordability, and entrée to drug treatment
programs. An anticipated eighty to ninety percent of individuals who could benefit from
treatment but are not receiving it could join the programs.
➢ Additionally, authorities must target the nation's youth to impede the problem before it stems.
Studies indicate that most individuals initially abuse drugs in their teenage years. Studies further
suggest that in 2013, there were just over two million new users of illicit drugs or close to seven

thousand new users daily. Of this figure, more than half were under eighteen years of age
(National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2015).
➢ Suppose Americans are willing to change the outlook on drugs and drug use. In that case, we can
decrease the population of our prison systems while at the same time increasing tax revenue,
giving us much needed money that we could then allocate to additional public defenders, and
giving the youth a brighter future.
➢ Such endeavors will lower the initial caseload of the already overworked public defenders while
at the same time allowing the states to hire more attorneys so that all people in the justice system
can get a defense attorney that has time to represent them.
➢ In the United States, civil liberties are certain absolute rights that citizens retain under the United
States Constitution. Although prisoners lose some of these civil rights, they still maintain
individual rights, including the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, free speech, freedom
of worship, assembly, and the right to avoid cruel and unwarranted.
➢ Besides, studies indicate a high prevalence of HIV among inmates despite significant
sensitization and public awareness programs that happen globally. Similarly, the rates of sexually
transmitted infections (STIs), hepatitis B, and C, among other health conditions like TB, are
estimated to be ten times higher within the facilities compared to the overall population
(UNAIDS, 2014). In specific settings, estimations are that the burden of HIV among inmates may
stand at fifty times above that of the entire population.
➢ Widespread infringements that most prisons make enclose poor medical treatment, offering the
inmates unsanitary or hazardous conditions, sexual or physical assault, and threats against
inmates to dishearten them from complaining to authorities concerning appalling prison state of
affairs.
➢ Additionally, overcrowding in prisons fuels riots, assaults and creates unconstitutional conditions
for prisons. This overcrowding also creates unsafe work environments for the guards and
unlivable conditions for the inmates. Due to this, organizations such as the American Civil

Liberties Union (ACLU) have filed lawsuits against the states that do not offer the proper support
and staffing required running a prison constitutionally.
✓ Conclusion
➢ Overcrowding in prisons is a significant concern affecting the United States justice system that
lacks a clear solution on how to resolve it. The United States has more individuals incarcerated
per capita than any other jurisdiction in the world. This overcrowding is due to the lack of space
for new inmates. Additionally, repeat offenders, particularly the lower class citizens who the
system releases from prison and feel as if they have no other choice but to commit crimes to
survive in their communities, also contribute to this overcrowding.
➢ Until authorities figure out a way to lessen the number of offenders, increase the rehabilitation
programs, stop the war on drugs, and offer individuals proper defense counsel while going
through the court systems, then the problem of overcrowded prisons will persist in the United
States.

References
Bureau of Democracy (BoD) (2013). Report on International Prison Conditions: Global
Conditions in Prisons and Other Detention Facilities: New York, Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor.
Carson, A. (2015). Trends in U.S. Corrections: Washington, D.C., The Sentencing Project.
Connecticut General Assembly Office of Program Review and Investigations. (2000). “Factors
Impacting Prison Overcrowding.” Retrieved from
http://www.ct.gov/opm/lib/opm/cjppd/cjresearch/recidivismstudy/whatiscausingprisonov
ercrowding.pdf
Kenning, C. (2017). “U.S. civil rights group sues Nebraska prisons for overcrowding.” Retrieved
from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nebraska-prisons-lawsuit-idUSKCN1AW2GG
Lauhgland, O. (2016). “The human toll of America's public defender crisis.” Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/07/public-defender-us-criminal-justicesystem
Miron, J., Waldock, K. (2010). “The budgetary impact of ending drug prohibition.” Retrieved
fromhttps://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/DrugProhibitionWP.pdf
National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2015). “Drug Facts.” Retrieved from
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-trends
Rob, A. (2010).Current Situation of Prison Overcrowding: London, UK, International Centre For
Prison Studies, King’s College London, University of London.

Swendsen, J., Burstein, M., Case, B., Conway, K. P., Dierker, L., He, J., & Merikangas, K. R.
(2012). Use and abuse of alcohol and illicit drugs in US adolescents: Results of the
National Comorbidity Survey–Adolescent Supplement. Archives of general
psychiatry, 69(4), 390-398.
UNAIDS (2014).Prisoners: Geneva, Switzerland, The GAP Report.

Attached. Please let me know if you have any questions or need revisions.

Running Head: PRISON OVERCROWDING
1

Prison Overcrowding
Instructor’s name
Institution
Course
Date

2

PRISON OVERCROWDING

Prison Overcrowding

Introduction

In the contemporary setting, prison overcrowding is a pertinent subject influencing the United States
justice system. All across the nation, the issue of prison overcrowding has deteriorated to the extent of
infringing on citizen constitutional civil rights. The war on drugs commenced during the Nixon era
espoused long-lasting effects in packed courtrooms and prison systems. The burdened judicial system
mostly relies on public defenders. The lack of real defense has created an excess of unjust convictions
throughout the years, consequently exacerbating prison overcrowding. Thousands of United States
citizens, who have received sentences for crimes they never committed, further crowd the current
correctional system. Additionally, harsher penalties on come petty crimes are augmenting this problem.
Consequently, a limited number of public defenders, harsher sentences for minor offenses, and
Sentencing policies are the leading contributors of prison overcrowding in are increasingly resulting in the
United States correctional system's overstraining.

Essentially, the US penal system requires legislation alterations that render new actions illegal. For
many years, the legislature and the criminal justice system have espoused a tough on crime approach.
Overstrained public defenders lack the resources and time to build a solid defense for all their cases due to
the augmented caseloads they encounter. Since 1963, the country's incarceration rate has more than
quadrupled, with up to ninety percent of criminal defendants in the United States lacking adequate
resources to make them deal with these cases (Laughland, 2016). The criminal justice system operates
like a fast-food joint where a client comes in and receives their sentence and move on, rather than a
justice system where every individual gets a fair trial; the judicial system seems overburdened and backed
up that it just has to push every individual through it.

PRISON OVERCROWDING

3

Overcrowding emanates from the incapability of prisons facilities to accommodate or receive or
extra inmates. Consequently, authorities institute emergency measures to help deal with such intricacies
including emergency accommodation, or keeping offenders or prisoners police stations. United States
Prison Service Department affirms that overcrowding has become a perpetual intricacy. The International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recommends the ideal that prison facilities must espouse. For
instance, the committee affirms that the minimum space that each inmate within a facility should occupy
must be more than 3.4 square meters per area, with a perimeter of 20 to 30 square meters per person (Rob,
2010). Additionally, the ICRC has minimum rates ideal for air circulation or renewal within the facilities,
and the strength or amount of requisite. Despite these recommendations, there is practically no methodical
information or data obtainable to facilitate the smooth evaluation of whether the facilities adhere to the set
standards or assist in comparing various facilities in different jurisdictions (UNODC, 2013).
Furthermore, low data exist indicating the perception of prisoners towards overcrowding.
The lack of space that new inmates can occupy in correctional facilities has resulted in
overcrowding in these facilities. For instance, the past two decades have witnessed an over operational
capacity at Connecticut's prisons. This increased strain is even though since 1990, authorities have
endeavored to increase their facilities' bed capacity and decrease arrests and crime rates in this
jurisdiction. The nation's war on drugs that focuses on the prosecution and policing efforts rather than
focusing on rehabilitation processes has resulted in an augmentation of these numbers. Studies indicate
that offenders' rehabilitation is vital as it helps in reintroducing them back into the public and offers them
opportunities to reform and become industrious community members, instead of becoming repeat
offenders who they often become. Offenders must receive an outlet that permits them to get back into the
mainstream workforce and give them fundamental skills other than dealing drugs in the streets.
There are societal issues that many of these criminals face that push them back into recidivism, such
as scarcity, a shortage of employment or education opportunities, drug or alcohol use and abuse, exposure
to criminal operators, mental illness, and racial disparity. The cycle of getting out of jail or prison and

PRISON OVERCROWDING

4

going right back in creates a population increase and does not help reduce the overpopulation of inmates.
In Connecticut, leaders formed a committee to scrutinize why there is such overcrowding in the state and
what they could do to fix the problem. In its report, the committee distinguished a workable, long-term
resolution to the prison overcrowding menace. The committee asserted that interventions must extend
beyond merely increasing prison beds. It found out that interventions must address the collective impact
of the various inmates who, in the end, return to or remain in their neighborhoods. The committee further
noted that unless authorities found out ways of curbing their criminal activity, any good cutbacks in
illegal activities or the prison population would be intricate to realize.

Consequently, vulnerability will haunt the definitive objective of safeguarding the public
(Connecticut General Assembly Office of Program Review and Investigations, 2000). Until a solution to
lower crime suffices, or authorities set aside funding for more prisons, or curb the tough on crime stance's
enthusiasm, it will be difficult to reduce the overpopulation of prisons in the United States. This factor
demonstrates the need to find a way to change the system in overcrowded prison populations. Without
some change or more funding, the United States will continue being the world's leader in the number of
overpopulated prison facilities. The US population supposed to be free land, unfortunately, the country
has more cit...


Anonymous
I was having a hard time with this subject, and this was a great help.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Similar Content

Related Tags