American people could be funding the trip to Mars instead of what they are now funding. We are funding the wrong future with mass incarceration. We don't have to have people miss their children's birthday or Christmas if we fix the incarceration system. American taxpayers are wasting valuable resources by investing too much in the prison systems.
Our first order of business, we need to stop the severe overpopulation and overspending of prisons. "...We will spend an additional $9.8 billion to incarcerate our fellow Americans"(Freidman 16). With this absurd sum of money, you could buy a plane skip the private jet, a 747 to yourself. But, what if the government had this extra money? They could add to NASA's annual budget and possibly fast-track the Mars expedition. However, at the pace of annual incarceration, several more taxpayer's dollars will go into the prison system."There is a 1050% change of the amount of inmates in prison from 1970 to 2016"(Sentencing 1). At that rate, we will have an estimated total of 2,683,333 if we do not start the change now. We need to use different methods of imprisonment. We need to possibly use probation more and for more drastic situations we could use the death sentence.
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"With drug trafficking and possession sentences with probation is 5.29%"(US 1). The other 94.71% goes to jail for possession of drugs. They do not need to go to prison, they just need rehab. Also, I am sure that rehab is cheaper than feeding, clothing, and housing. Another issue is we incarcerate more than other countries."U.S. has the highest incarceration rate out of all of Europe"(Sentencing 17). We do not have to imprison everyone if they do a wrong. Prisons should be a last resort, not a first option. Prison should only hold killers or drug lords, not some person who accidentally got involved with illegal
This shows how the government should start funding these programs to help lower the jail population. This is why the government should have a sentencing
We long for solutions, we long for peace, we long for change. But how? For decades, we notice the rate of incarceration increase heavily, as time passes. However, solutions to decrease those rates have been minimum. Adam Gopnik provides very detailed arguments on why the incarceration rates are so high in the United States, the comparison between jail time and crime committed, and also focuses on the importance of working together for smaller solutions to later “fix” problems like incarceration and our criminal justice system.
There has been an exceedingly high increase in the population in federal prisons. “The Federal prison population has grown by 750 percent since 1980 and our Federal prisons are approximately 30 percent over capacity” (). We are overflowing our prison cells with criminals of all degrees. We need Smarter Sentencing to keep people from have long drawn out sentences and crowding up our cells for people who actually need to be there for that amount of time. Over capacitated cells are actually ridiculous.
The money that is spent on prisons and the prisoners could benefit the citizens of America in another way. The amount of money that comes from taxes alone could help build houses for those in need, help pay off student loans or even give money back to the hard working Americans. “The total cost of Colorado’s prisons—to incarcerate an average daily population of 19,958—was therefore $606.2 million, of which 3.5 percent were costs outside the corrections budget” (Vera 1). This money goes to items such as televisions, health care, beds, luxury items, hot meals, coffee, and cigarettes. The list goes on although prisoners were put into jail because they are harmful to society.
III. Cost a) How can we lower costs? b) Depending on the state, it costs $40,000 to house an inmate c) We are now spending more on the imprisonment of people instead of education the children of America. d) It will cost us less in the long run if we can fully rehabilitate inmates so they don’t keep coming back.
Mass Incarceration America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, outstripping Cuba, Rwanda, Thailand, Costa Rica and Ukraine. The United States is the world’s leader incarceration. There are currently five-thousand prison facility, which in habit over 2 million prisoner. There has been a 500% increase over the past thirty years. These numbers include, federal and state prison, and local jails. .
As stated here “The more money a state spends on building and running prisons, the less there is for everything else, from roads and bridges to health care and public
In the 1970s the United States entered the era known as mass incarceration, the byproduct of the drug war. The War on Drugs changed how society handled drug dependency, diverting the problem from public health to criminal justice. Since the Nixon administration, the political stance on being tough on crime has resulted in various laws and policing practices that heavily criminalized drugs to point in which the prison population in the United States increased from 300,000 people in 1972 to 2.3 million today (Barish, DuVernay, Averick & DuVernay, 2016). The epidemic of mass incarceration corresponds to a variety of public health issues such as mental illness, increased violence within society, increased incidence of addictions, and increased incidence of chronic illnesses (Drucker, 2013).
The rising population in prisons became a major concern. In 2010, a prison reform expert explained that putting drug addicts to incarceration cost too much estimating eighty billion of dollars a year (Childress, 2014). Thus, congress's proposal is to shorten the sentencing of nonviolent offender. Some report explained that "there are many people serving time for violent offenses who haven’t actually committed violent acts and might be good candidates for reduced sentences." (Neyfakh, 2015).
Essentially, Stevenson wanted the taxpayers to be worried about where their money is going. The government funding for prisons has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today; as a result, America now have to face the unprecedented economic crisis (Stevenson 16). The money spent on jail is suppose to be used for public services, education, health , and welfare. This is the reason
There’s a multitude of things that need to be repaired in our system, and prison is one of them. Prison reform is an important issue because we need to take care of everyone and with the way we treat criminals, we do not see them as equal. We need to assess illegal acts correctly instead of trying to put people in jail for the rest of their lives. We also need to work more on how we try to rehabilitate people. Instead of barring convicts off from the rest of us, we need to teach them how to integrate, so they can live better lives than they did
Another example of how the prison system harms the economy is that ever since 1950, the number of people in the prison system has increased exponentially over the last 40 years. There are around 1.46 million people in the United States prison system and 39% of them were in prison for no public safety reason and could have been punished in a less costly and damaging way (such as community service) (Source B). Having low-risk offenders do community service helps the environment and gives the offender a less harsh
Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.
The system is lacking really horribly with incarceration. The reason why reform should happen is because If you give prisoners a certain amount of years and tell that they are assigned to go to a program they would not feel so guilty . This is why the crime rate has increased prisoners are not getting enough time incarcerated. Jail isn’t a vacation it’s a punishment you’re not supposed to make prisoners feel so comfortable that they will still do wrong and end up coming back.
Not just that but jails in the United States are overcrowding with criminals and making it hard to find room for them. There is a way to stop overfilling our jails and waisting our taxes and that reason is called the death penalty. Criminals are filling the jails and one day there will be to many people in jail that we don't have anywhere to put these criminals. Across the country, police are being laid off, prisoners are being released early, the courts are clogged, and crime continues to rise. (Richard C. DieterIf) Criminals around the country are getting released our of prisons early because the rate of crimes are rising and the jails are overflowing with new criminals each day and have no where to put them.