Overcrowding In Federal Prisons

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With the highest incarceration rate in the world, American prisons have become vastly overcrowded. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of 2010 1.6 million Americans are incarcerated, and out of that ninety percent of all prisoners are men. One in five individuals incarcerated is convicted of nonviolent drug charges. Almost half of the federal prisoners are convicted on nonviolent drug charges. There are three major factors contributing to the overcrowding in federal prisons. One of the first contributing factors to this is mandatory minimums. In the twenty year span from 1991 to 2011, the number of crimes with minimum sentences had risen from ninety-eight to one hundred ninety-five (International Business Times). Even crimes without minimum sentences are being increased in order to make all sentence times proportional. This is causing sentences to be longer than what would be handed down normally. Another one of the factors is no paroles. This means that all federal offenses have to serve in their entirety. This just keeps the inmates inside the prisons even longer. Because of this prisoners are being added into the system but no one is leaving it. The last contributing …show more content…

After going through the program being sent to a halfway home where they will be eased back into society and closely monitored. There is no way to accurately calculate the success rate but, organizations like American Addiction Center and The National Institute of Drug Abuse stress the need for users to get proper help from programs instead of just detoxing like what would happen when an individual would be arrested. That National Institute of Drug Abuse also claims that treatment can help lower criminal activity when the need for illegal drugs in

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