Reducing_Prison_Overcrowding

Reducing Prison Overcrowding Reducing Prison Overcrowding Since its inception the criminal justice system has faced enormous problems concerning prison overcrowding. This problem comes from many causes and reasons. The breakdown of the system and the addition of the war on drugs, combined with the financial problems are all wreaking havoc on a much overburdened system. The system is being weighed down by the high costs of housing prisoners with an even higher cost of housing death row inmates. This paper will look at some of the reasons that overcrowding of prisons has become a problem and look to ways to remedy the situation. Policy Claim The claim being made here is that the war on drugs has substantially contributed to prison overcrowding. It was not until the war on drugs started did we see a dramatic increase in not only the prison population but also in the construction of prisons. Decriminalization of drugs may be a solution to this problem however, a much greedy system would not profit if drugs were decriminalized. Statistics According to criminal justice experts the United States has the largest prison population with the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The reason for this is tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates. The U.S. Justice Department shows that there are a record 7 million and rising or one in over 32 Americans behind bars or on probation or parole. 2.2 million people are in prisons or jails in this nation. More people are behind bars in the United States than any other place in the world. China comes in second with 1.5 million people followed by Russia with 870,000. Facts The fact is that the United States is supposed to be the freest nation in the world but it imprisons its people more than any other nation on the planet. “The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens,” said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives to the war on drugs. Resources Resources to combat this problem are pretty elementary. We need to stop putting people in prison for crimes that are not violent on society. If someone chooses to use drugs that is their business and should never be the business of the criminal justice system. Decriminalization of drugs would be a solution to this problem. As stated before the system would not like this because there would be no more profiting from someone else’s misfortune. Public Opinion America’s prisons, like many of our public schools, reflect our country’s most shameful and profound failing’s say’s Sherrilyn A. Ifill. The three-strikes-law which puts offenders committing the same offense in prison for a mandatory 25 years to life has been the contributing factor in California prisons being overcrowded. When sentences are being handed out for a life sentence for 0.03 gram of methamphetamine we know there is a problem with the war on drugs. Putting drug users in prison should not be tolerated and the war on drug policies should be eliminated along with the three-strike-law for drug users. History The start of overcrowding in prisons began in the 1970’s and 1980’s. At this time there was an unprecedented growth rate in the prison system. The two largest prison systems in America are California and Texas. The California prison system has seen an eightfold increase from 20,000 in the 1970’s to 160,000 today. In Texas between 1992 and 1997 the population in prisons more than doubled as 70,000 prisoners were added to the prison system. Texas now operates 80 prisons with one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States. Politicians The expanding of prisons is good news to politicians, unions, and law enforcement. With the failure of big government we see as Anthony Gregory says “no matter how much money the politicians throw at the problem, there is still overcrowding.” Gregory also states that “moving towards restitution models would free up valuable space and so would stopping the overzealous enforcement of the three-strikes-law against people whose third strike was a minor, nonviolent offense” (Gregory, Anthony 2006). It would seem that both parties, the Democrats and Republicans alike just love the prison industrial complex. Judges Judges are starting to get on the bandwagon when it comes to overcrowding in prisons. They are starting to see that there may be a problem with health care which violates inmate’s constitutional rights. They are even considering mandating inmates’ release. California Federal Judges have mandated the release of 43,000 inmates siting prison conditions appalling and unconstitutional. Prosecutors Prosecutors have a tool at their disposal that is called discretion and sometimes this leads to unfair sentences. If we continue to allow prosecutors this discretion when it comes to sentencing then we will always be faced with overcrowded prisons. Prosecutors are known to make plea deals and will drop charges of a lesser value to pick up charges of a greater value and sentence a person to prison time or probation instead of facing a lengthy trial. Defense Attorneys Prison overcrowding is a defense attorney’s dream. Defense attorneys see dollar signs with the overcrowding of prisons. There are cases either defending someone, civil cases for mistreatment, and even cases that claim undue hardship. There are also constitutional cases to consider. Death penalty cases can go on for years and attorneys not only take on the burden of the case before them but also profit from it. Correctional Officers Correctional officers have to be the people in the worst position when it comes to prison overcrowding. They are directly the ones responsible for the prisoners care and the security of the facility. With prison overcrowding the security of any correctional facility becomes an issue. Correctional Administrators The administrators of a correctional facility must abide by policy handed down by the policy makers. Their job is to maintain security through the correction officers and at the same time making more room for incoming prisoners. They also share in the responsibility of who gets paroled. They are responsible for the entire facility along with the overcrowding problem. There should be some sort of policy in place where an administrator can say that my facility is at capacity and will not take anymore. Law Enforcement All that can be said for the prison overcrowding problem when it comes to law enforcement is that law enforcement must be doing its job or there would not be such a problem. Maybe some law need to be looked at surrounding what people can be arrested for and maybe this could be a part of the solution to curbing prison overcrowding. Just maybe we should have more officer discretion and not less. The fact remains that if it were not for law enforcement there would not be people in jails and prisons. Law Enforcement Administrators The Law enforcement administrators have a big responsibility when it comes to prison overcrowding. They are the ones that guide the law enforcement officers way and enforce the rules that the law enforcement officers have to go by. If they were to say to the officers of their department that people are going to be arrested for jaywalking then the order comes from them and is handed down to the officers of the department. There are guidelines and policies that are in effect that they must pass down to their officers. They are responsible for the entire department and any mistakes will come down on them. These people like to follow the letter of the law so maybe it is some laws that need changing like the war on drugs and drug decriminalization. Victims The problem with prison overcrowding and victims is that most of this overcrowding is due to victimless crimes. Anthony Gregg states “those who have committed no crime against a person or property should be released from the jails and prisons. These include drug offenders (users), sex workers (prostitution), those in possession of illegal guns, and anyone else who has hurt and threatened no one, whose only offense was to violate a victimless crime statute” (Gregg, Anthony 2006). We can also consider the tax payers of this country victims because as Anthony Gregg states “at a cost of about $35,000 a year per inmate, not only is keeping the in prison enormously expensive, draining resources that could be used to pursue actual violent criminals, but it is downright immoral” (Gregg, Anthony 2006). Law Abiding-Citizens Law abiding-citizens must realize that their safety cannot be realized by the amount of prisoners behind bars. This is the same as depending on the government to keep us all safe. We must stop putting people in prison for committing a victimless crime. As the saying goes no victim, no crime. Politics When enacting reforms that would release prisoners and create more-humane conditions for those who remain incarcerated there is not political gain. The key to our dysfunctional prison policies by too little professional correctional expertise has become our shamefully bloated prison population and this is only a symptom of the problem. In the Unites States we incarcerate more than 2 million prisoners with the most of those being African-American and Latino men and women, and a disproportionate number for nonviolent drug offenses and victimless crimes. Policy Recommendation The policy recommendation that would be most favorable would be to stop the arrest of persons for victimless crimes. We must realize that this is against everyone’s constitutional rights. We need to stop imposing the three-strikes-law to those who are convicted of a victimless crime. We also need to incorporate decriminalization of drugs into our laws. If we were to decriminalize drugs the entire drug trade would be put out of business. There used to be a day when one could by many of these substances which are now considered to be illegal at a drug store, we need to go back to that time. Just putting the drug trade out of business would greatly reduce prison overcrowding. If drugs were decriminalized there would be no need to traffic, distribute, or sell narcotics the killings would stop. It would all be handled legally from the drug stores of course we would want to create a tax on this to offset the reduction in the profits made by housing inmates. These drugs would also be safer to use if they were regulated by our government. The taxes generated from this could be used for other things instead of housing victimless criminals. Rationale The rationale behind this thought is that we are supposed to be a free and prosperous nation and the only we can be this is to stop the arrest and conviction of victimless crimes. The war on drugs has done nothing more than arrest and incarcerate victimless criminals who are not criminals at all. Along with this war on drugs and three-strikes-law we have created a system that incarcerates victimless criminals at the expense of the taxpayer. Impact The impact this would have is that we would be living in a much freer society focusing on the violent criminals and leaving those victimless criminals alone. Some would say that decriminalization would only increase crime but I must disagree because if we would decriminalize drugs and provide these services in a drug store there would no longer be a reason to kill someone for a drug deal gone bad. There would be no reason to kill because one did not pay the supplier the full amount owed. I mean the list goes on and on here. The government could make a ton of money taxing people that want to use drugs instead of making money off of housing inmates. We could change the tide if we wanted to however; we have a government that is seeing more profit from their involvement in shipping drugs from Afghanistan. Globalization As for the globalization efforts, we would once again be seen as the freest nation on earth and we would be respected more because of our efforts. Also on a global scale, if we decriminalized drugs the people wanting to do illegal drug business in this country and ship these drugs to our country would no longer be in business they would now have to go through our government. All of these things would greatly reduce prison overcrowding and we would no longer be the nation incarcerating the most of its people in the world. Just that alone would make a very strong statement as to how we are still the freest nation on earth. References Gregory, Anthony July 26, 2006. The Real Reason Behind Overcrowding in Prisons. Retrieved from Contra Costa Times at http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp'id=1775 Haney, Craig Prison Overcrowding: Harmful Consequences and Dysfunctional Reactions. Retrieved from; http://www.prisoncommission.org/statements/haney_craig.pdf Ifill, Sherrilyn A. November 29, 2010. Keeping America’s Prisons Overcrowded. Retrieved from The Root at http://www.theroot.com/print/48363 Moore, Solomon. February 11, 2009. The Prison Overcrowding Fix. Retrieved from; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/us/11prisons.html Rivera, Brandi 2011. War on Drugs. Retrieved from; http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/50929/war_on_drugs.html'cat=17 Vicini, James December 9, 2006. US Has the Most Prisoners in the World. Retrieved from Reuters at http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi'file=/headlines06/1209-01.htm