Prison Overcrowding Research Paper

One problem faced in the system of corrections is the overcrowding of prisons across the United States. Prison overcrowding is a very tough situation and is a huge concern throughout the United States. Stemming from the governments “war on drugs”, prisoners keep pilling up in prisons with no where to put them, thus creating a problem for the criminal justice system. More prisoners in a prison causes more problems for that facility. As well as increasing the needed cost to maintain and care for those prisoners. The overcrowding of prisons not only effects the prison but effects the lives of the prisoners. Overcrowding of prisons is an ongoing situation and leads to many problems for prisoners in the correctional system. The problem we are …show more content…
For example, the ratio of prisoners to officers increases which causes the increase of violence in facilities. In addition, overcrowding causes many problems for prisons because the needed cost of keeping those prisoners healthy and alive are high. Eric Holder, once stated that it cost $35,000 per inmate or $80 billion dollars a year to maintain a prison. Furthermore, people believe that mass incarceration is the answer and is effective but it is the opposite. Moreover, prisoners as well as people react differently to the feeling of being crowded physically and mentally. Researchers show that there are many negative effects on inmates from overcrowding (1990). Some of these negative effects prisoners experience is an increase in their aggression. Also, prisoners are more vulnerable of getting sick more frequently due to amount of people in a confined area. Moreover the prisoners lack medical help to help them recover from sickness due to the overcrowding. Lastly as the prison population increases the suicide rates increases as well in prison. More prisoners are killing themselves in overcrowded prisons due to the effects of living in overpopulated small areas. Next, due to the overcrowded prisons, some prisoners aren’t assigned jobs which leads to more down time. Prisoners also aren’t offered any educational or employment programs, and are limited to health care resources. Also, no employment programs or lack of the amount of jobs, increases the amount of down time prisoners have to start conflicts throughout the prison. In addition, the lack of staff contributes to the lack of supervision throughout the prison. Moreover, correctional officers will have a harder time maintaining order or supervision in prisons were the prisoners population are greater than the buildings capacity. Which causes problems throughout the prison because