The Impact Crime and Incarceration has on Society
Crime and Incarceration is a highly negative topic in our society. Crime has been around for decades. We hear about it on the news, school, work, and many other places. Crime not only affects the people who are incarcerated, but also everyone else around them. In a study where Oregon calculates the cost of incarceration and crime, it shows that the average household spends at least $700 general fund dollars on the criminal justice system (Wilson par 3). The crimes that people commit affect our society, not just themselves. People need …show more content…
Most of the people who are supposed to be incarcerated have been awaiting trial because there are too many cases and not enough judges. “Under incapacitation theory, higher incarceration rates are expected to correlate with accelerated crime” (Stahlkoph). People who are incarcerated have no connection to the outside world, they do not get better in prisons but sometimes it makes them worse. No one is doing anything to help criminals become better for when they return to the outside world. Treating criminals like animals does not leave a positive impact on them, it can make them worse or they are more likely to commit the same crime or different crime once they are released. “They opine that as mass incarceration disrupts patterns of social interaction, weakens community social organization, and decreases the stigma of imprisonment, its longer-run effects may be to reduce its effectiveness” (Lynch par 1). Crimes that happens in certain communities or neighborhoods continue to happen because they all influence each other creating a high crime rate area. “The subjects of interest are all individuals who are convicted of a crime for the first time, some of whom receive a sentence of incarceration following their conviction” (Apel par 2). Incarceration at a young age affects teens and young adults making it harder for them to find …show more content…
The money that is being spent on prisons could be used for education and other important factors such as health, political, and cultural in society. Money should be going toward prisons to keep people safe but not the amount of money that is currently going to prisons. Some of the people put in prisons should be serving a fair amount of time if they have committed little crime. Prisons are overcrowded because of the amount of people awaiting trial. The United States needs a better criminal justice system. Keeping non criminals in prisons is using important money that could be used for other resources. What if the United States did not have to pay taxes for the criminal justice system? We wouldn’t have clean prisons or the food to feed them, but that is important in order to keep criminals out of society. Either way we will all still have to pay taxes for them. It is good to pay for prisons to keep people safe but the amount of money that goes toward prisons is enough for more important factors as