The number of Americans that are in prison has elevated to levels that have never been seen before. Prisons in the US have always been crowded ever since the first prison was invented (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The first prison in the US was the Walnut Street Jail that was built in Philadelphia in 1773, and later closed in the 1830’s due to overcrowding and dirty conditions (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The prison system in modern US history has faced many downfalls due to prison overcrowding. Many private prison owners argue that the more inmates in a prison the more money they could make. In my opinion the argument of making more money from inmates in prisons is completely unconstitutional. If the private prisons are only interested in making …show more content…
Even though prison overcrowding may help prisons make money from its inmates. Prison overcrowding has resulted in an increased number of dangerous prisons, prisons are less sanitary, and the cost to house inmates has increased.
Throughout the years that prisons have been in operations we have seen many issues arise when it comes to maintaining prisons on a budget. According to the Cheat Sheet article the cost of housing inmates varies from state to state. The average cost per inmate was $31,286 a year in order to take care of them (The Cheat Sheet). New York is at the top of the list when it comes to cost per inmate which is on average $60,076 per prisoner (The Cheat Sheet). In my opinion, these numbers are very alarming, especially when it comes to taxpayer dollars being spent on inmates. According to the Cheat Sheet article the annual price to taxpayers was over 39 billion dollars. Even though these numbers are at an all-time high, state policymakers have taken into account the cost of housing each inmate. The state imprisonment rate declined, this is in part due to the fact that state lawmakers researched driven policy changes to control prison growth, reduce recidivism,
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has seen many legal lawsuits due to prison overcrowding and the prison conditions they bring along. Between 1978 and 1982, three of the cases on prison and jail conditions that had been heard in the lower federal courts reached the United States Supreme Court (Jacobs and Angelos 103). According to the article Prison Overcrowding and the Law one of the court cases heard in the supreme court was an appeal from a decision holding the “totality of conditions” in the Arkansas prison system. The other two court cases were appeals from decisions by federal judges holding that crowding by itself was forbidden by the Constitution (Jacobs and Angelos 103). These court decisions helped to resolve the standards to be used by the lower courts in deciding prisons and jail crowding cases (Jacobs and Angelos 103). The federal judges in the Arkansas case all labeled the overall conditions of that state’s prison system “shocking to the conscience” (Jacobs and Angelos 104). According to the article Prison Overcrowding and the Law severe crowding, violence, sexual assault, filth, inadequate medical and dental care, inadequate food facilities, and failure to separate mentally and physically ill inmates were all cited as contributing to the unconstitutional “totality of conditions”. I think that these judges were absolutely right to give these conditions such names even though they are inmates they still need access to certain livable conditions. Prison overcrowding was
Overcrowding is a problem that is not only seen in for profit facilities, but in all facilities. If there was funding to provide more housing units for the inmates there would be less staff and inmate assaults. I feel that this is a huge negative factor in the for profit setting, it is bad enough that staff and inmate assaults happen as often as they do in state and federal facilities. If more staff are taken out of the equation, it increases the likelihood of staff and inmate assaults.
Private prisons have a negative effect on states and local governments. Unfortunately, the number of private prisons has been increasing since their inception in 1983 causing further problems. For-profit prisons offer no real benefits and are bad investments for states. Furthermore, private prisons beleaguer communities with high turnover rates that hurt local economies. The demands of these institutions put an excessive burden on the local community’s infrastructure. Similarly, private prisons strain the county and city legal systems. More often than not, spin-off industries and economic benefits promised by the for-profit correction industry fail to appear. Additionally, private prisons are allowed to cherry pick the least expensive inmates, leaving the more expensive inmates for the state. A number of studies financed by the private prison industry give the misconception that they save states money. More importantly, the need to make a profit is an incentive for private prison industry officials to engage in nefarious activities.
Of course, that would be the logical thought to have, but as it turns out, it 's a little more complex than that. Expectedly, “the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.” (Adam Gopnik) In other the words, more inmates meant more money for the company. Over the last thirty years, the Corrections Corporation of America, a company whose main source of income comes from “having as many [prisoners] as possible, housed as cheaply as possible” saw the incarceration rates increase to “500 percent to more than 2.2 million people.” (grassroots) Well, let’s not get carried away, one could argue that the spike in incarceration rates can’t possibly be the private prison’s fault. They exist only to control and house the prison population, not to create it. Well, one would be right, the private prisons are not directly responsible; they are not directly making more criminals but what one doesn 't realise is that they play a pretty critical role in the
In the article written by The Economists titled “Too many laws, too many prisoners” it talks about the prison system today and the flaws the system contains. Personally I do not believe prisons help those who commit crimes 100 percent. Yes, it allows them to think about what they have done and go back and question that decision. But people are not always sorry for what they have done and would do it again. Allowing them this time to do nothing is not good for the American society as a whole. By having so many people locked up it creates an unequal balance of society. In the article it states “Between 2.3 and 2.4M Americans are behind bars…. 1 and every 100 adults” To me this statistic explains a great deal of what is wrong with our economy;
As we know the federal government spends a large portion of our budget on the maintaining of prisons. During the 2011 fiscal year it cost nearly $29,000 to house a prisoner in a state penitentiary per year as stated by the Federal Register. The funds that are estimated to keep a prison running end up running over the prediction causing them go over budget. We can account for this because according to The Price of Prisons|Oklahoma on Vera.org, here in the state of Oklahoma the Oklahoma Department of Corrections called for $441.8 million taxpayer dollars in the 2010 fiscal year. The actual cost for the maintenance of the prisons called for $453.4 million taxpayer dollars. This is about $11.6 million taxpayer dollars over the set budget for the year. This proves that there are too many things that need to be taken care of in these facilities. Much of the money went to paying employee benefits and to capital costs which is also stated in this article. Instead of using the money to pay for employee benefits they should be using it to pay for what the inmates need. This causes a strain on citizens because they are obligated into paying more taxes. The money being used on prison employee benefits could be going to other programs such as education and Social Security which would benefit more
“Prison Overcrowding: The Problem.” American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC-American Legislative Exchange Council, 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Private prisons in the United States, came about in the early 1980s when the war on drugs resulted in a mass wave of inmates, which led to the lack of the prison system’s ability to hold a vast number of inmates. When the cost became too much for the government to handle, private sectors sought this as an opportunity to expand their businesses through the prison industry. Since the opening of private prisons, the number of prisons and inmates it can hold has grown over the last two decades. With the rising number of inmates, profits have also substantially grown along with the number of investors. But what eventually became a problem amongst the private prison industry was their “cost-saving” strategies, which have been in constant debate ever
Overcrowding is one of the predominate reasons that Western prisons are viewed as inhumane. Chapman’s article has factual information showing that some prisons have as many as three times the amount of prisoners as allowed by maximum space standards. Prison cells are packed with four to five prisoners in a limited six-foot-by-six-foot space, which then, leads to unsanitary conditions. Prisons with overcrowding are exposed to outbreaks of infectious diseases such as, tuberculosis and hepatitis.
Throughout history into today, there have been many problems with our prison system. Prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, rape rates are off the charts, and we as Americans have no idea how to fix it. We need to have shorter sentences and try to rehabilitate prisoners back to where they can function in society. Many prisoners barely have a high school education and do not receive further education in jail. Guards need to pay more attention to the well being of the inmates and start to notice signs of abuse and address them. These are just a few of the many problems in our prison systems that need to be addressed.
The price of feeding and watching over prisoners is extremely high. Prisoners are not worked, they may have chores but they are consuming way more than they give back to society. In many ways prison can be better than being unemployed or homeless. The United States spend over $40,000 a year per inmate. Good citizens are paying for these criminals to be cared for and fed locked away in our prison systems. Over 50 percent of prisoners that are freed from prison have to return, the rate of rehabilitation is terrible. Prisons in the U.S are not efficient. The prisons today do not serve the purpose to make people pay for their mistakes and become better people over
Overcrowding of prisons due to mass incarceration is among one of the biggest problems in America, mass incarceration has ruined many families and lives over the years.America has the highest prison population rate , over the past forty years from 1984 until 2014 that number has grown by four hundred percent .America has four percent of the world population ,but twenty-five percent of the world population of incarcerated people Forty one percent of American juveniles have been or going to be arrested before the age of 23. America has been experimenting with incarceration as a way of showing that they are tough on crime but it actually it just show that they are tough on criminals. imprisonment was put in place to punish, criminals, protect society and rehabilitate criminals for their return into the society .
In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the nation, sky-rocketed to 708 percent between 1972 and 2008. Today, there are about 145,000 inmates occupying areas only designed for 80,000 (Posner). Peter Mosko, “an assistant professor of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice” (Frazier) stated, “America, with 2.3 million people behind bars, has more prisoners than soldiers” (Frazier). There have been studies that have shown “there are more men and women in prison than ever before. The number of inmates grew by an average of 1,600 a week. The U. S. has the highest rate of crime in the world” (Clark). Because of this influx in inmates, many prisoners’ rights groups have filed lawsuits charging that “overcrowded prisons violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment” (Clark). It is clear that the United States corrections system needs to be reformed in order to eliminate this problem. Prison overcrowding is a serious issue in society due to the fact it affects prison ...
There are several reasons why prisons overcrowd. One reason is because when offenders are released they commit another crime only to become incarcerated again. Inmates may also be sent back to prison for failure to complete community service. Another reason for overcrowding is tougher sentences. Offenders are receiving longer sentences for their crimes. They are facing harsher penalties for certain kinds of crimes, such as drug charges. Many offenders are forced to spend more time in prison after many states had the Truth in Sentencing Act passed, which requires that offenders serve the majority of their time incarcerated. It is becoming rare for offenders to get the option for parole. Overcrowded prisons are also less likely to help the prisoner to reform. Prisoners are having their rights infatuated from them by officials who are not pushing harder for improved prison
The first issue that I would like to address is the overcrowding issues in prisons. In my opinion, overcrowding issues are the biggest issues in our correctional system that concerns every citizen. Running a prison required money, resources and manpower, with overcrowding issues, the government would have no choice but to increase the number of correctional facilities, privatized prisons and increasing manpower. According to (Levitt, 1996), “The incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled in the last two decades. At year-end 1994 the United States prison population exceeded one million. Annual government outlays on prisons are roughly $40 billion per year. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is three to four times greater than most European countries.” (p.1). Overcrowding issues are not only affect prisons but the society as a whole as well. The reason is simply because prison population directly refl...
When prisons get overcrowded need for money rises to repair and operate machines. Some prison workers or all get paycheck cuts and higher health risk, this puts a negative look for people wishing to work at the prison. This presents a bad look on prisons and sometimes gains the locals attention. This also extends the amount of money taxpayers have to give to help the prison with overcrowding problems, it makes locals unhappy and some may become indebt with lots of taxes. This can also cause protest and has happened with the states to reduce the amount of money you have to give for prisons.