Prison Overcrowding

             Simple Solutions to a Growing and Expensive Problem
             So much could be done with 32 billion dollars a year; new schools, supporting our troops, helping the less fortunate, feeding the hungry people of the world, but instead of tackling those issues, Americans spend just that much on maintaining prisons each year. "States are spending more money on prisons than education" (Kaminer). "Each year that an inmate spends in prison costs $22,000. The cost of a life term averages $1.5 million" (Kaminer). The overcrowding of prisons is a growing problem among the U.S. prison system, and in turn is costing the U.S. a lot of unnecessary monies.
             Operations and management problems with the U.S. prison system today have a great deal to do with prison overcrowding. "In 1998 U.S. prisons operated at an average of 15 percent over their rated capacities" ("Prisons"). Suicides, violent deaths, as well as mental illness are some of the issues surrounding prison overcrowding. The overcrowding of prisons is due to the large amount of Americans going to prison and serving a longer sentence for committing crimes.
             Prisons are unnecessarily full of nonviolent criminals. Prisons have become a source of housing for anyone. The mentally ill and habitual drug abusers are kept incarcerated, when where they really need to be is in some kind of treatment facility. There are also groups of people that would be better off doing there time elsewhere. Women and the elderly, the same, pose little or no threat of repeating a crime, and therefore are safer candidates for the use of parole.
             The U.S. is struggling with how to charter the issue of prison overcrowding. "Recently, several states, including New York, Illinois, and California, have actively sought to develop ways to send fewer nonviolent offenders to prison, hoping to refer them to treatment centers instead" (Marciniak). Texas
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Prison Overcrowding. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 17:06, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/9861.html