In such a way, the policy makers attempt to resolve the problem of the lack of funding of the penitentiary system aggravated by the growing prison…
When people think of prisons, they imagine that the occupants inside deserve to be there. That a person is doing their time for a crime committed. When it comes to privately owned prisons, the time doesn’t always fit the crime.…
"Tough on crime" rhetoric comes and goes, leaving lasting impressions on the overcrowded prison systems, creating long term financial obligation for government budgets. America 's correctional system is a vast enterprise, in terms of the number of people it processes and services, the number of employees required for inmate care, custody, and control, the cost of outside contracting required to maintain and constantly enlarge facilities, and the burden to the taxpayer. The correctional system requires nearly one third of resources allocated to the criminal justice system. Yearly it costs over $64 billion to operate the correctional systems of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government. This sum is only one percent of all government spending. Per prisoner to feed, house, clothe and supervise costs $20,000 not including indirect costs. The yearly expenditure exceeds $30,000. The other significant cost is construction. They divide the total construction cost of any one institution by the number of prisoners it houses to arrive at the cost per "bed." This cost is on average as low as $31,000 per year for a minimum security prisoner to as high as $80,000 for a maximum security prisoner. Of course the annual cost of incarceration varies from state to…
The private prisons industry is growing rapidly, in the year 2011, companies that were a part of the private prison industry brought in "$1.7 billion: [in] total revenue recorded by CCA" (Lee) and many have questioned the intentions of the companies that own and operate those facilitates. The history of private prisons can be traced "as far back as 1852 when San Quentin was the first for-profit prison in the U.S." (“Private Jails”). Private prisons did not become popular again until the 1980s, when a "wake of wide-spread privatization" happened (“Private Jails”). Since the resurgence of the private prison, there have been two primary sides. Those who oppose private prisons state that profit drives the companies who operate and construct the…
In the United States, the government preaches equality for all, while in upholding a system that discriminates against almost everyone that is not white, or not male. Packing prisons in the United States is second nature, since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the populations in prisons have increase at least 400%. And when talking about the prison system in the U.S., there has to be a conversation about race, because the prison system systematically targets people of color. U.S. soil bleeds racism, from the countries racist words about refugees to the color of skin dictating your pay. There is nothing number one about a country with a broken and racially biased criminal justice system, with racism directed at refugees of war because of their…
The United States accounts for 5% of the world population but has nearly 22% of world prison population. This means that nearly 2 million people are incarcerated, and 1 in 3 black men will go to prison or jail if this trend continues (Amnesty International). Mass Incarceration has been one of the major debate recently in Politics. The politician has been debating on a method to reduce the prison population, and to do that they need to find the cause of it and the different contribution. In recent year, there has been a cut in funding for many states rehabilitation, education and other programs because the costs to accommodate an inmate is escalating upward. At the same time, laws are put in place that put disadvantaged people within the criminal…
“Since the 1970s the rate of incarceration in the United States has quadrupled, after having been relatively flat over the prior half-century.”-Anthony Zurcher. The rate of prison incarcerations has increased so much over the years; the government can’t afford to incarcerate that many people. Karen Thomas’s article “Time to Invest in Schools, Note Prisons” shows that United States incarcerates too many criminals violent and non-violent. Joan Petersilia said in her article “Beyond the Prison Bubble” that, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any free nation. This also supports the idea that The United States incarcerates too many people.…
In society today, it is commonly known that crime rate has increased dramatically by the years. This is where many of us look for ways to solve such issue. It is the last place anybody would want to be in. but unfortunately we have hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions around the world. Thousands in just the United States, Those are prisons. Just hearing that word makes us think bad things right away. Murder, theft, violence, and everything bad that happens in this world. We live in a world where prisons and jail are very important and almost every country, state, county, or city must have at least one. Prisons now are much more crowded than they were 20 years ago. The number of inmates in just the United States has doubled between the years of 1992 and 2011. The question many of us should ask ourselves is why do we need prisons? Are prisons effective in any way? Are prisons causing economic issues? Are prisoners getting proper treatment while incarcerated?…
Current research regarding overcrowding in prisons and jails is relatively limited in its scope. Most research focuses on only prisons and is primarily quantitative research. Quantitative research is incapable of examining personal opinions of inmates who serve time in overcrowded institutions; and ask whether or not inmates accredit their failure to rehabilitate to overcrowding. Qualitative research would help better understand how inmates perceive the issue, and whether or not the statistical issues are reflected in their minds. Quantitative data clearly shows that overcrowding in prisons has negative effects such as lack of resources, poorer living environment, and ultimately higher recidivism…
Have you ever wondered where and how our tax money being spent? We pay taxes for services that we all benefit from as a community. Things like roads, law enforcement, libraries, transportation systems, to live comfortable and safe. However; a very big chunk of that money goes towards prisons and jails. California’s current prison budget is almost $10 billion dollars (Jerrod). Even this sum is not enough to incarcerate all of the offenders. California will need an additional two to four billion dollars to address the overcrowded problem (Hayes). This does not necessarily mean that the crime rate has increased, this just means that politicians need to change the way our prison system works. In the end we are the ones paying for everything. Statistics have shown that the crime rate has decreased over the years but prison population continued to grow (Mayeux). This has started since 1980s when California released a series of strictest mandatory sentencing laws and stringiest parole policies in the nation (Young). These actions have increased prison population by 700 percent since the 1980s (Young). All at the expense of taxpayers which costs us $32 billion dollars yearly nationwide and keeps growing (Kieso). Government cut budgets for education but they keep adding money to correction and rehabilitation sector (Mayeux). Prisons are overcrowded to the point that Supreme Court ordered our state to release 46,000 prisoners because there is just no room for them (Jerrod). Purpose of this proposal is to provide more information on this issue and propose a solution to reduce prison population by reducing the numbers of secondary offenders and going for the root of the problem.…
Those living in the American colonies in the seventeenth century faced many challenges. These tensions of political, social, religious and economic natures came from abroad and within. Influences of the political and economic nature from abroad onto the established American colonies shifted the shape and nature of the colonies; whereas, the social and religious tensions from abroad tended to create new colonies. The Quakers, for instance, were a group of English Protestants who left England in search of a new home for “their own religion and the own distinctive social order” (Brinkley, Alan. " Transplantations and Borderlands."…
The United States has less than five percent of the world’s population and over a quarter of the world’s prisoners (A. Liptak, 2008). Something about this doesn’t sit well with me and it never has. With 309,090,740 people in the United States it is hard to believe that 1 in every 100 American adults are currently behind bars and from 2006 to 2007, the prison population alone grew by 25,000 (A. Liptak, 2008). This does not include county jails. It costs the federal and state governments approximately $20,000 to $30,000 a year to incarcerate one offender. That means that if a convicted felon’s sentence is 10 years, it will cost the government at least $220,000. The estimated total annual cost of housing, feeding and providing services to all prisoners is $40 billion.…
This was aimed at reducing the amount of money spent to cater for this by the federal government (David, 2013; John, 2012). This has resulted to mass recruitments of criminals into jail through the collaboration of the judicial system and the private business people to ensure the prisons are full. In return, the private partners are reaping a huge profit from this. The corrupt deals are resulting into two different corruption opportunities created by the American Government; once in prison, the prisoner’s rights are not considered by these private prisons. This is ensured through congesting the prisoners in small holdings ensuring such housing are the cheapest, and having as many numbers of prisoners as possible (David, 2013; John, 2012). For instance, a cooperation by the name Corrections Corps of America (CCA) and GEO group had proposed to the government to manage all prisons in 48 states of US at a much reduced cost. On the other side, and this is the genesis of the corruption, this company was to run a prison of 1000 bed capacity and government was to ensure that 90% of this capacity is maintained. The government agreed to these terms by ensuring that there are more tough laws for ensuring maximum prosecution. It also ensured that the minimum imprisonment will be 25 years even for minor cases like smoking marijuana. On the other hand, to ensure maximum profit, some few prisons like the newly build Karnes County in Texas has the prisoners life improved (David, 2013; John, 2012). In here, prisoners are not congested and they are free to walk around the prison confinement and even play descent game. To ensure this is maintained the government has to impose more taxes to its citizens. This is a two way deal; the government makes more money and the profit for the private partners…
African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at more than 5 times the rate of whites on average. For example in Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate for African-Americans. Approximately 4.6% of all African-American males in Oklahoma are incarcerated compared to of only 0.9% white males. In California 1 out of every 22 African-American adult male is in state prison. The racial disparity is greatest in the category of drug arrests and indicates institutional discrimination against African-Americans. It is hypothesized in some of the literature that for less serious crimes police may exhibit greater discretion at the point of arrest and judges may deviate from the constraints of the law which allows other factors to enter into their…
However, little empirical research exists to directly count the costs of mental health problems and severe mental illness in the criminal justice system. Where prison health care cost estimates exist, they are often unreliable, outdated, and do not focus specifically on mental health costs as opposed to physical health costs. Despite these shortcomings, several studies indicate that prisons today need to spend more on prisoner health care, including expenses on mental health care specifically (Kinsella 2004; Office of the Inspector General 2008; Stephan 2004; Sterns et al. 2008). This is in large part because of the aging of prisoner populations. Data from the National Association of State Budget Officers, manufactured by the Council of State Governments, indicate that, from 1998 to 2001, state corrections budgets grew an average of 8% each year, and during that same three-year period, correctional health care costs grew by 10% annually. Mental health care costs are listed as one of the major contributors to this growth: in 1998, states spent between 5 and 43 percent of their health care budgets on mental health (Kinsella 2004). In addition to direct mental health care costs, mentally ill prisoners have higher rates of misconduct and accidents in prisons (Fellner 2006; Toch and Adams 2002), thereby sustaining higher indirect or collateral costs in prisons.…