Prison Overcrowding In The United States

The United States leads the world in highest number of people incarcerated. Because of this, the United States also has a prison overcrowding problem that needs attention. Prison overcrowding is becoming a significant problem because of increased recidivism rates, changes to laws, and improvements to law enforcement strategies. All lead to more people put in prison as Portland State University concludes. Although changes to laws and improved law enforcement strategies have good intentions, the fact that more people end up in prison causes far more difficulties. By rehabilitating non-violent drug offenders in an outside rehab facility, prison overcrowding rates would decrease, and drug offenders would get the mental and physical help they are not receiving in prison. …show more content…
The issue of overcrowding means each prisoner has a less amount of space than what was originally required. In 2011 a U.S. Supreme court case called Brown Versus Plata stated overcrowding as a cruel and unusual punishment, as it showed many negative physical consequences. It was also shown that while prisoner misconduct was not directly caused by overcrowding, a study done in 2003 indicated prison management style is related to prisoner misconduct and prison managers feel the stress created by overcrowding and lash out on prisoners more often. Along with being considered a cruel and unusual punishment and causing stress on officers and wardens, prison overcrowding leads to psychological problems and increased inmate violence. Prison was a place designed to keep criminals under supervision to punish the person for what they did, and help them learn to not commit a crime again. The conditions caused by overcrowding do not let prison do its job