Prison overcrowding or typically, mass incarceration, is the most threatening issue in virtually every state and in many municipalities all over U.S.. It has been reported that the imprisonment rate in U.S. is seven times as much as in Europe and it is equivalently increasing with the increase in population. Inmate populations are escalating due to a great number of sentencing to jails and prisons and the number of repeat offenders returning there is growing too. The main point to ponder is where the actual problem lies and why only in U.S., the rate of sentencing to prisons is so high? Briefly, the problem lies within the entire system. The various components of the criminal justice system do not act independently of one another rather these are inter-related and the system is directly impacted by each component. In most of the states, a significant number of non-violent and juvenile activists such as drug abusers are put in jails for a long time, which can simply be rehabilitated and released as socially advantageous persons. Such minor cases, when treated as majors, create court dockets and hence it takes much time to listen and to decide the sentencing. Usually such cases are given correctional sentences; ranging from probation, community service, and community corrections to jail and prison time. Hence, eventually our correctional institutions get filled up and become highly overcrowded. Another important and severe issue of prison overcrowding is racial discrimination and injustice in U.S.' criminal system. As a matter of fact, most incumbents are African-Americans who are...
Texas Prison Reform: A Success Story Government The prison population in the United States experienced an unprecedented expansion between the 1970s and the end of the first decade of the 21st century (Editorial Board, 2013). Beginning with a prison population of 174,000 in 1972 it grew to over 1.4 million by 2010, representing over a 700% increase (PSPP, 2010). By comparison, the growth of the U.S. population was a modest 32% during
Productivity-Education/Craft/Trade -- a key to being able to stop the return to the penal system is to provide training necessary to allow the individual to find work after leaving prison. Not only is it extremely tough to get a job as a convicted felon, but the skills necessary to get a job that will afford a decent living are tough to get in prison. Earning a degree either online or
Why U.S. Criminal Courts Are So Dependent on Plea Bargaining?Despite increasingly aggressive efforts to reform existing draconian sentencing law in recent years, the United States still incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country today (Kann, 2019). This alarming trend indicates that the nation�s state and federal courts have been kept very busy indeed adjudicating hundreds of thousands of individual criminal cases each year. Although some critics of the
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