Why Do Prisons Solve Overcrowding?

In the United States there is a problem of overcrowding on our prisons. Overcrowding is when the amount of prisoners in a prison exceed the amount of space that the prison has. This is a growing concern because it can cause many problems. It can cause misconduct among the inmates, psychological stress, poor prison conditions, and post release recidivism. The problem continues to grow and it seems nothing is being done about the issue and many people don’t even know we have this problem. However, there a few solutions to the problem in order to reform the overcrowding of prisons. There are too many people in prison and a lot of them should not even be there. There is a problem of sending people to prison for nonviolent crimes. This mostly …show more content…
Chris Grayling the leader of the Common and a former justice secretary says that our concerns should not be with overcrowding. He says it is not the biggest issue and that the real issue for many of the problems is drug access. Grayling also said “The big challenge in our prisons, the thing that has led to violence in our prisons more than anything else, has been the way in which so-called legal highs have got into prisons. And a huge amount of effort has gone into trying to stop that” (Weaver). Grayling says that big bosses have gone to prison and started to control drugs and have managed to get them inside prison. Not only that but since they all want to be in control, this leads to violence among inmates. To him, overcrowding is not the main issue and not that main cause of violence in prison. Marc Debbaudt also argues that prison should not be pleasant to live in in the first place and that prison should be so bad that people never want to go back. Although he doesn 't advocate for torture or extreme measures, he still thinks that they should experience discomfort and overcrowding should be tolerated. Debbaudt writes, “Felons deserve to be in prison. Obviously, to the extent you accept the premise of overcrowding, one solution to overcrowding, as some sensibly minded people suggest, is that we simply need more prisons”(Debbaudt). This may seem to make …show more content…
Not only because these conditions are bad for them to live in but also because it causes many problems. A lot of the people shouldn 't actually be there because they’re drug addicts not criminals and are being incarcerated instead of getting the help the need. A lot of conditions they 're living with are unacceptable even if they are criminals. Some people say that it’s easier to just build more problems but that is not actually fixing the problem at hand. There are other alternatives that are more effective like not putting people in prison for low level crimes, making them do community service or paying fines, put on parole, probation and house arrest. Also, releasing elderly prisoners early and lowering the sentence for people doing time for crack-related crimes could also