The Importance Of Overpopulation In The Criminal Justice System

The Criminal Justice system in the twenty first century is system that has collapsed and it is in mayor need of reforms that are going to fix many problems that we have to deal with and resolve. Prison overpopulation is one of the greatest problems that this nation needs to deal with because we have the highest incarceration in the whole world. Race has played a huge rule in the Criminal Justice system which has preyed on poor people of color. Reentry and recidivism has been a major contributor to our huge prison population that millions of people have fallen into. Our court system is in need to reform from its way that it prosecutes people and the laws that have mandated mandatory minimums for different type of crimes. All of these factors

Our system is failing because “The U.S. prison population has more than quadrupled since the early 1980s: when mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drugs when into effect” (Borowski, 2016). this clearly depicts a failing system in need of reform. Millions of people are suffering due to a system that has been targeted at incarcerating people who commit low level crime or nonviolent crimes. We are truly living in a period of governance through crime which has only set fear on people and increase the prison population drastically. This system has been used since president Nixon took into office and instated his war on drugs that gave the birth to the huge problem of mass incarceration. ever since our nation has been governing through crime and people have been set with the fear that crime is on the

This is an immensely wrong ideology because we need to work to have less people in prison and more people in school, which is not the case in the United States. All of these prisons and prisoners cost taxpayers billions of dollars every year that could be used for better things. We are spending billions of dollars on a system that keeps on creating more prisons and system that incarcerates people with nonviolent crimes. We need to think about the consequences that this system is creating and use our resources in better ways. Also “Over 2.2 million people are currently in U.S. jails or prisons.” (Borowski, 2016). This is the highest incarceration in the world how broken the criminal justice system is. We only compromise of five percent of the world’s population but we have the highest incarceration. This just an immediate need for a reform to the criminal justice system that is destroying millions of people’s