Prison Overcrowding Pros And Cons

There are many pros and cons to trying to reducing the number of overcrowding of prisons in the United States. Many would be opposed to the early release of those who have committed even menial crimes without thought to the issue of overcrowding. The solution isn’t to keep building new prisons, but to have prisons, law makers and rehabilitative programs all work together for the main goal of public safety. In order to maintain public safety, certain measures need to be taken to make sure those who are being released are no threat and that those who would pose a risk, are kept behind bars. Between the costs that are associated with imprisonment, parole and probation and the programs needed to rehabilitate, the problem of prison overcrowding

This law doubles sentences for second-time felons and gives life sentences for even non-violent third felony offenders. In March 2008, there were 41,284 prisoners serving time under this three-strikes law. In 2005, they estimated this law was costing the state $500 million each year. (Moore, 2009)

Public Safety Concerns

The biggest issue with public safety concerns is the public may be quick to overreact and not hear out the positive aspects of releasing certain offenders early on parole or probation. The public is quicker to want more prisons built, than to support programs that would rehabilitate those offenders who could be active parts of their communities without threat.

California Correctional Peace Officers Association opposed to parole reforms - "If hardened criminals are released early - without supervision or support - crime will increase and lives will be lost," said the association 's acting president, Chuck Alexander (Farrell,

It was found that 40% of all people sent into corrections were violators of parole or probation. Of those, 39% either had drug or mental health issues. (Lockette, 2014)

As it stood in 2014, the state of California had more than 117,000 inmates in facilities that are supposed to hold only 81,600 inmates. Governor Brown proposed a budget that included $500 million for new prison facilities and $200 million for programs to help former offenders from re-committing crimes. (Wilson, 2014) Prison reforms cost billions of dollars and California had a deficit of $40 billion. They just cannot afford rehabilitation needs of the parolees (Moore, 2009).

Without properly supplying the resources and programs these ex-offenders need upon release, they will end up back where they started and possibly re-committing crimes ending back up in prison and continuing the cycle of prison overcrowding. Instead of creating more and more prisons to hold these offenders, they should focus this money on programs for parolees or probationers to utilize in the effort of turning their life around and getting the needed assistance for that