Causes of Prison Overcrowding Essay

provide adequate health care to the inmates because of overcrowding in the prisons. The Brown v Plata case was formed as one by two class action suits filed by two different California inmates. The first was the Coleman v. Wilson in 1990 by inmates who suffered from serious mental disorders. Plata v. Schwarzenegger was the other case filed in 2001 by prisoners who had serious medical conditions. Both cases claimed that the California prison system violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of…

rate in the world. The prison population rate had increased immediately after 1970 with increase number of 1.3million inmates while the incarceration rate increased with number of 400 per 100,000 (Clear et al., 2013). However, there seems to be little relationship between the crime rate and the incarceration rate. The United States prison overcrowding results from the increment in the rate of arrest and the approach to sentencing as the major means of punishment. Most prisons are relatively…

factors contributing to this problem. In recent years, America has taken new approaches to crime, such as the “War On Drugs” and the “Three Strikes” law. These approaches have drastically increased the prison population, to the point that 1 in 31 adults, or 3.2% of the population, will spend some time in prison in their lifetime (ibid). There are many reasons for the amount of prisoners, but one reason in particular stands out: the strict sentences…

Prison Overcrowding has been an issue for many years in the United States but a good solution has never been put into action. The reason that prisons are overcrowded is because there are a high rate of criminals and the Criminal Justice system has not developed a plan to reduce the crime rate. As a result of prisons overcrowding inmates do not feel safe in the prison. Prison overcrowding can cause fights, diseases and mental illnesses. It can cause fights because there are too many inmates in…

The prison conditions in the United States are appalling to the inmates who are currently serving their time. Prisons have become worse today due to a crumbling infrastructure and currently cannot handle the influx of prisoners coming in. I also disapprove of the current conditions inmates face. Some of these issues is the overcrowding that inmates are dealing with. Budget cuts have also caused Insufficient funds to services like health care, schooling and jobs for rehabilitation to be…

One of the most inspiring books I read on the topic of prison overcrowding regarding racism was The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. She believes that the issue of mass incarceration should be referred as the issue of racial justice. She mentions the speech “I have a Dream” by Martin Luther King and how we as a nation have disobeyed his dream. The book was written during the time of President Barack Obama. It states, that as United States was…

facing prisons in contemporary America are broad and interconnected. The interconnection, coupled with misinformation and hysteria in media and the general public, makes it difficult to address these issues, especially for policy makers. In this essay, I am going to look to three pieces of the issues facing modern prisons and briefly discuss what, if anything, can be done to help resolve the issue. Often times, the first dilemma that comes to mind is prison overcrowding (Florida). Prison…

Contributing to Prison Overcrowding? “Good people — they make bad decisions — but they shouldn’t be punished for it for life,” says Bobby Reed regarding the way non-violent drug offenders are being treated in the United States. Bobby Reed is one of many people who have been incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses due to the injustice of our criminal justice system. As a result, prison overcrowding is very common all over the United States. Many factors contribute to the overcrowding of…

Prisons Overcrowding and How it Happened “Get Though on Crime” The state of the overcrowding in the United States prison can be traced back to the 1970’s when the “Get Though on Crime” movement started in hopes to give harsher punishments for severe crimes in hopes it creates a deterrent for individuals to commit violent crimes. The 38th President of the United States, Richard Nixon stated “Doubling the conviction rate in this country would do more to cure crime in America than quadrupling the…

their reintegration into society (Klassen, 2016, para. 4). In the mid-1970s, people began to question the effectiveness of rehabilitation, and there was a renewed interest in stricter ways of deterrence (Klassen, 2016, para. 4). Today, despite these prison reform efforts, there continues to be high rates of recidivism, being at 40.6% as of 2010 (Bonta et al, 2010, p. 16). This systemic issue has caused Canadians to question why rates of recidivism continue…