Over the past several years, multitude of legislative bodies have made many attempts to reform their sentencing and incarceration laws to address the problem of mass incarceration of our citizenry. Apparently, some of these efforts have been successful and other not so. In the next few paragraphs I will be analyzing the article “Does Smarter Sentencing Equal Lower Prison Numbers?” Within this analyzation I will give my readers my general reaction of the article. I will also touch on what is being done across our nation, as well as what I believe can be done to help or fix the problem. And lastly I will state what I have learned from the article that I had no prior knowledge of. Did you know that the United States has the world’s highest incarceration
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With 2.3 million Americans behind bars, the criminal justice system is larger than ever. Its growing tentacles have caught almost every demographic subset of our country. The U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet incarcerates nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. The system also has massive hidden economic and societal costs that reverberate throughout society, affecting all of us. (The Brennan Center) To reduce mass incarceration by way of laws, policy and legal reforms there has to be more of rational system that will serve and protect the public safety of our communities. Also people how to find ways to eradicate the criminalization of minor behavior, as well as reform selective enforcement policies, institute a proportional system of punishment all of these things how to be taking in great consideration. Moreover, we how start holding everyone in the criminal justice system accountable for what they do and do not do by making sure that government dollars are spent on effective, evidence-based programs. More than 20 years after the 1994 “Crime Bill” directed federal funds toward building new prisons across the country, a new Brennan Center report urges Congress to pass legislation that would do the reverse by rewarding states that successfully reduce both crime and incarceration.
With 2.3 million Americans behind bars, the criminal justice system is larger than ever. Its growing tentacles have caught almost every demographic subset of our country. The U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet incarcerates nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. The system also has massive hidden economic and societal costs that reverberate throughout society, affecting all of us. (The Brennan Center) To reduce mass incarceration by way of laws, policy and legal reforms there has to be more of rational system that will serve and protect the public safety of our communities. Also people how to find ways to eradicate the criminalization of minor behavior, as well as reform selective enforcement policies, institute a proportional system of punishment all of these things how to be taking in great consideration. Moreover, we how start holding everyone in the criminal justice system accountable for what they do and do not do by making sure that government dollars are spent on effective, evidence-based programs. More than 20 years after the 1994 “Crime Bill” directed federal funds toward building new prisons across the country, a new Brennan Center report urges Congress to pass legislation that would do the reverse by rewarding states that successfully reduce both crime and incarceration.