Increase In Prison Overcrowding

The immediate increase in inmate population led to the prisons degradation and overcrowding. As of 2014, there were approximately 134,472 prisoners in the state institutions. To put the statistics in a retrospect, since 1971 prison population grew by 563% (Ravi 2014). Likewise, the majority of inmates were serving time for nonviolent crimes. For example, in 2004, 56 % of the third-time strikers were convicted for nonviolent or nonserious crimes (Brown and Jolivette 2005). With, massive rates of incarcerations, the cost of housing and supervision (adjusted to the inflation rate of 2014) increased from $23,761 in 1971 to $50,870 per capita in 2014 (Ravi 2014). Consequently, with the costs and the prison population rising came the issues of housing