Prisons And Jail

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Recommended: Why is the over crowding of prisons a problem

Jordan Coronado May 7th 2014.
Cor 201

Health Care in Prisons and Jail: Mental Health, Privatization, Costs.

Introductory paragraph

Prisons and Jail are a major part of United States Criminal Justice system and its constantly growing at a very rapid rate compared to other countries. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the 1970’s we had 200,000 inmates in our correctional system and by 2011 the number had increased to 2,240,600 and slightly decreased by the end of 2013. Drugs are a big reason of why this sudden increase of people being incarcerated. The Bureau of Justice Statistic revealed that 1 in 4 inmates in 2002 were incarcerated due to drug offenses which increased significantly from previous years. In 1983 that figure was much lower, 1 in 10 inmates were in jail due to drug offenses.
Literature Review
This substantial increase of inmates that has occurred within the last 30 years has led to many overcrowding of prisons and jails throughout the United States and this can be an issue because the constitution grants inmates the right to health care and protects inmates from cruel and unusual punishment in prisons, coming directly from the 8th Amendment. Overcrowding can possibly be a big issue regarding health care because many inmates are living in inhumane and cruel conditions which violate their 8th amendment rights.
However that is not the only issue I will be writing about, I will be focusing on the inmates Mental Health when placed in solitary confinement or being in a super-max prison’s which results in being isolated for most of the day without any interactions with other people. I will also be ad...

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...at overcrowding in prisons has many negative effects, some violating the constitutional rights of these inmates. Overcrowding is reached in a prison when it exceeds over 80 percent of the design capacity (Pitts, 2014).
Solutions to prison overcrowding
While researchers have offered many solution to this critical issue, there are three simple categorized. The first and most simple of all would be to increase prison capacity and it would simply just make sense because if there isn’t enough room for all the inmates in a specific prison, then why not just build the prison capacity. The second category would be using different diversions programs which “diver offenders” from prison time. The last but not least would be as we discussed earlier, backdoor approach allowing inmates for early release in order to release prison populations in these prisons ( Pitts, 2014).

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