OVERCROWDING PRISON SYSTEM

Overcrowding Prison System within United States



Overcrowding Prison System within United States

Introduction

Prison overcrowding, is also known as “prison crowding,” is a matter of great argument and concern in current criminal justice public policy debates in both Canada and the United States. Currently, prison overcrowding is topic of public attention as a social problem in the United States, prison overcrowding has match with the extraordinary growth in the nation's prison population over the past several decades.

Discussion

Pro: Arguments for prison system within United Sates

Proponents of the “too many prisoners” position contend that overcrowding can best be addressed by reducing the number of offenders admitted to prison and the amount of time they are incarcerated. These arguments, that reductions can be achieved without sacrificing central criminal justice goals such as public safety or retribution, hinge on a number of overlapping factors. First, many of the inmates in federal and state prisons are serving sentences for nonviolent offenses for which shorter terms of incarceration or community-based sanctions might be substituted. According to most recent U.S. Justice Department statistics, for example, approximately 50 percent of sentenced prisoners in state prisons are incarcerated for either property or drug offenses or other crimes not categorized as crimes of violence. About a third of all prison admissions fall into the drug crime category.

Second, fears about releasing dangerous offenders to the community are mitigated by evidence that the volume and seriousness of recidivism among released prisoners is much less than it may at first appear. While as many as two-thirds of prisoners admitted to state prison are incarcerated for failing to comply with their terms of probation or parole, about half of probation or parole violators are not committed on new offense convictions. Rather, they are imprisoned for technical violations such as failing a drug test, nonpayment of financial sanctions, failure to appear for scheduled treatment or supervision appointments, or for new misdemeanor or felony arrests that frequently involve less serious drug and property offenses not normally resulting in incarceration.

Proponents of reducing overcrowding by reducing prison admissions and length of stay further point to very mixed findings of research on the effect on crime rates as a result of the massive increases in incarceration over the last several decades. Although some researchers have reached opposite conclusions, an equal or greater number have failed to find any consistent relationship between rates of crime and imprisonment. Moreover, even under estimates most favorable to the “more prisons-less crime” point of view, studies suggest that external forces other than incarceration play a significant and difficult-to-separate role in the rise and fall of crime rates. Such factors include changes in the economy, percent of the population in younger “criminogenic” age groups, and improved policing prevention strategies.

Arguing along similar lines, comparison with other nations such as Canada, Britain, France, and Sweden shows that U.S. offenders receive sentences that are many times as long as prisoners in most other Western countries, but their rates of violent crime are ...