Prison Overcrowding

As of September 2011 federal prisons were operating at 39 percent overcapacity (Gilna). The prison system in the U.S is seriously flawed. The number of people who have been incarcerated is rising. More people are being put in jail and they are staying in jail longer. The money being spent on incarcerating prisoners is nothing short of excessive. There are cheaper alternatives to incarceration that are just as effective as jail. These alternatives reduce crime at the same rate prison does at only a fraction of the cost. People may claim that it will be too expensive to reform the prison system, but in reality it is not. The government can employ cheaper methods of rehabilitation and even save money. Prison overcrowding in the U.S is currently costing the government billions of dollars a year; if the government offered appropriate rehabilitation services the U.S could save millions.

There is an overcrowding of people in today's prison system. As of 2006, one in eleven inmates is serving a life sentence, roughly 127,677 people (“Rise of Rehabilitation”). Since 2006 the number of inmates serving life sentences has only risen, and those inmates will be in prison until they die. With new people being sentenced to prison everyday the prison population only rises to higher and higher numbers. In 1999, three percent of the nation's adult population was incarcerated, around one in thirty-four adults (“Population Boom In Prison”). With these adults in prison their kids have had to grow up in broken homes. These broken homes often lead the kids to committing crimes themselves. For children of incarcerated parents are six times as likely of being incarcerated themselves (“Rise of Rehabilitation”). When these kids end up committing crimes, the population in prison only gets higher and higher. From 1990 to 1997 the average prison sentence increased from twenty-two months to twenty-seven months (“Population Boom In Prison”). This means that people are staying in jail longer, which only contributes to the problem. Prison overcrowding affects the lives of inmates, their children, and the lives of everyday citizens.

The overcrowding of the prison system is costing the government too much money. From 1978 to 1997 the combined budget for prisoners has increased by $26 billion (Skancke 13).

This $26 billion budget is used to pay for a broken prison system. It is not fair that taxpayers should pay to fund a broken system. The combined budget for 1.2 million nonviolent prisoners exceeded the federal welfare budget for 8.5 million poor people in 1998 (Skancke 13). The money spent incarcerating people who could be reformed in a cheaper and more effective way could go to decreasing poverty and homelessness. In Florida and California, as of 1998, taxpayers spent more on the prison system than the education system (Skancke 50). The money that could be saved with cheaper and more effective reformation methods should go