Persuasive Essay On Incarceration

Today in my generation I have noticed a huge amount of incarcerations that I’ve seen publicly on television and in the media. The Smarter Sentencing Act does not repeal any federal mandatory minimum sentences, but instead reduces prison costs and populations by creating a fairer, less costly minimum terms for nonviolent drug offenders (). The 4 main things it will do will be to save billions spent on incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders, save expensive prison beds for more dangerous offenders, remedy a long-standing racial injustice and strengthen black communities, and address over-criminalization (). To give a little history on sentencing, jails, and incarceration, it was invented by Quakers, members of the Religious Society of Friends, a faith that emerged as a new Christian denomination in England during a period of religious turmoil in the mid-1600's and is practiced today in a variety of forms around the world. To members of this religion, the words "Quaker"and "Friend" mean the same thing(). The modern prison was invented by the Quakers in the late eighteenth century to provide an alternate to the cruel ways in which criminals were then being punished in the United States-by death mutilation, flogging, or public humiliation, among others (Davis 17). Imprisonment is a
“The Federal prison population has grown by 750 percent since 1980 and our Federal prisons are approximately 30 percent over capacity” (). We are overflowing our prison cells with criminals of all degrees. We need Smarter Sentencing to keep people from have long drawn out sentences and crowding up our cells for people who actually need to be there for that amount of time. Over capacitated cells are actually ridiculous. Smarter Sentencing can reduce the amount of incarcerations with better sentencing so there are not people getting years in prison and holding up cells so we get new criminals