Essay On Justice System Reform

Did you know the United States is home to five percent of the world’s population, with twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners and ninety percent of those prisoners being non-violent offenders? According to Us News & World Report the prison population has grown by eight hundred percent since the 1980’s while the country’s population only increased by a third. With this cancerous growth of the incarceration rate in America, the question is how far will this problem go, and how much will the American citizen have to pay before they realize the current justice system is obsolete. With an outdated system of justice and a spiraling incarceration rate, the question on most people’s mind is should the justice system be reformed? The main question on a lot of people’s mind is how the justice system get so jacked up. It all started back in 1986 when the devil known as Ronald Reagan was president, there was crack everywhere and I’m not talking about on the sidewalk or your plumber’s …show more content…
Otis states,” when we have more prisons we have less crime and when we have less prisons we have more crime” which is accurate because the unjust incarceration of people for petty crimes and sentences that doesn’t match the crime. Otis also goes on to say “that in the sixties and seventies we had less use for prisons and very few mandatory terms with a belief that rehabilitation worked and with the trust of the judge’s decisions, we got ourselves a national crime wave”, Otis is stating an opinionated fact even with the mass incarceration rate America is still faced with an out of control crime wave. So whether it be a few hundred of thousands or millions incarcerated there will always be crime. Otis is just telling a fable by basically saying by increasing the incarceration rate, the crime rate will