Criminal Justice Overview

As the inmate population is increasing and a growing concern in the U.S., many law enforcement agencies have analyzed data about the situation and are working to fight it. Despite a steady decrease in crime and arrest rates over the past 10 years, the United States has had to struggle with the persistent growth of the inmate population and a high rate of recidivism among convicted offenders under supervision (Huff Post Politics, 2015). The primary solution has been to add prison beds by building new facilities and expanding others -- almost 10,000 new beds costing well over $1 billion have been added since 1989 (Welsh, 1996). One scenario in the state of Delaware, approximately five years after the Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) completed the comprehensive construction project; it is almost at capacity and has had to transfer 500 inmates to out-of-state prisons to relieve overcrowding.

Well documented societal issues that impact the prison population and crime rate include factors such as poverty, a lack of education or employment opportunities, drug or alcohol use and abuse, racial disparity, exposure to others involved in criminal activity, and mental illness (Huff Post Politics, 2015) . The factors cannot be addressed or solved by a single state agency or by the criminal justice system. The response to some of these factors often occurs because state service systems do not have adequate funding or they have shifted the responsibility for addressing the issue or client population to the criminal justice system.

Many factors impacting prison overcrowding are, however, under the control of the criminal justice system. A continued increase in the number of offenders sent to prison due to numerous factors: high recidivism rate, high rate of offenders returned to prison for violating or unsuccessfully completing community supervision, new criminal offenses added to penal code (Prison Overcrowding Is A Growing Concern In The U.S., 2014). “War on drugs", harsher penalties for certain types of offenses, and increased role of victim and victim advocacy in the court and parole process. The factors include the nation's 20-year "war on drugs" that focused policing and prosecution efforts and resources on drug offenses and increased sanctions for those crimes. Increased prison bed space allowed the courts to sentence offenders to prison and adult probation and the parole board to return offenders to prison for a violation rather than use other alternative sanctions and programs. The high rate of recidivism among criminal offenders impacts the prison population (Prison Overcrowding Is A Growing Concern In The U.S., 2014).

Inmates convicted serving a greater portion of their sentences in prison, shift from indeterminate to determinate sentencing caused average minimum sentences to increase, elimination of "good time"(Welsh, 1996). "Truth in sentencing" established time-served standards