Overcrowding In The Prison System

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Federal prison, something that typical Americans don’t worry about, and something that the United States exceeds population in. Prison is a Social Issue and has many underlying problems that aren’t addressed enough. The most common problem among the United States’ prison system is over-crowding. Over-crowding while being a major issue in itself, causes many other problems in America and its federal institutions. In this paper I will discuss some issues with today’s current prison system and how specifically, overcrowding can have a large negative impact.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (2015), there are 208,860 federal inmates and 102 federal prisons. The prisons are 40% over capacity on average. With these large number of inmates, …show more content…

But a key issue that is linked with overcrowding is the high recidivism rates. The budget cuts along with the actual overcrowding itself, can be blamed for this along with the fact that the counseling and treatment programs aren’t preparing inmates to re-enter society. The direct result of reducing rehabilitative services is a high recidivism rate. The inmates violate their parole and are sent right back to jail. The National Institute of Justice website hired the Bureau of Justice to complete a study over recidivism rates in 2005. The study tracked 404,638 prisoners in 30 states, after being released within 3 years 67.8% were arrested again, within 5 years 76.6% were rearrested. (Durose, 2015) These statistics prove the claim that the rehab system in prison needs some major refining. Along with not working on the care and treatment system, the states are creating harsher penalties on crimes, and the shift from indeterminate sentencing to determinate sentencing are major factors in sending large amounts of people to …show more content…

According to Greenwald’s research drug usage went down by 21.6% among the Portugal’s population. Marijuana usage went down by 5% in just 5 years along with Cocaine and Ecstasy usage went down by 3%. (Greenwald, 2009) Crime rates went down substantially, it is believed that since police officers weren’t so focused on drug offenders, they started focusing on other crimes which assisted in lowering crime rates across the board. A 2008 survey of drug usage in the United States of America that was completed along with his research showed that the U.S. has the highest level of illegal cocaine and cannabis use in the entire world. This adds to the argument that there is a need for change in America’s drug

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