Overpopulation In Prisons

One of the great dilemma’s currently affecting the prison systems is overpopulation, and the factors influencing it. America currently has one of the highest prison populations in the world, which causes immense overpopulation in both federal and state prisons, which in turn create high risk situations within the prisons. As a result, many programs and incentives have been created to reduce the recidivism rate for soon to be released inmates, many of the programs related to either gaining a higher education, and job/skill training. But, with many monetary funds going to these programs, the concern is if education and job training programs actually have a significant impact on the recidivism rates. While there is a general conclusion that implementing
these higher education and job programs does help the prison system economically, while decreasing the recidivism rates, there isn’t enough objective data to clearly conclude these results. In the article, Prison’s Dilemma: Do Education and Jobs Programmes Affect Recidivism? by Norman H. Sedgley, Charles E. Scott, Nancy A. Williams and Frederick W. Derrick, the authors point out a very peculiar point, that the data supporting recidivism rates are somehow manipulated or due to poor methodological study, which results into unequal data. (Sedgley. 499). Because of selected testing, and “contaminated” data, the results can be manipulated to one sidedly support these initiatives to reduce recidivism. And with no direct correlation or direct results for these programs, one can’t find the true results of these initiatives, and argue that implementing these programs show little to no results, therefore rendering it ineffective.