Issues Associated With Prison Overcrowding In The United States

Issues faced with Prison Overcrowding
Prison overcrowding is when the demand for space in prisons in a jurisdiction exceeds the capacity for prisoners in the place, for those who aren’t familiar or just simply didn’t know what prison overcrowding is. “Prison overcrowding is caused by a variety of issues, such as not enough room in prisons, fluctuating crime rates, changes to laws and improvements to law enforcement tactics (Prison Overcrowding is a Growing Concern in the U. S.)” Researchers have determined that some of the causes of prison overcrowding are harsher penalties for criminal activities, changes to laws that make new actions illegal, high recidivism rates and needed improvements to the penal system. Prison overcrowding leads to
Corrections doesn’t receive enough funding to create new jails and everything else that may help corrections reduce overcrowding. Underfunding also leads to the ratio of correctional officers to inmates being extremely unproportioned. This leaves correctional officers outnumbered and vulnerable when they enter certain prison blocks alone. Whereas overcrowding is a psychological condition based on a perception of limited space by an incarcerated indi¬vidual, density is a physical condition, such as the ratio of inmates to available space in an institution. There are two forms of density: spatial density and social density. Spatial density, the measure most often used in prison-overcrowding research, is normally calculated as the proportion of inmates in an institu¬tion or prison system to the available space as estab¬lished by the rated capacity of the institution or system. Prison and jail officials often consider their institutions overcrowded when they exceed 80% of the rated capacity. Social density, on the other hand, is measured by the amount of double and triple bunking found in a correctional institution. Research indicates that inmate health problems and violence may rise as social density
29 billion and the prisons would save 125,000 “bed years.” (A bed year is a year’s worth of prison time for one person)” (Knafo 2013) Another solution proposed was to allow drug offenders to serve shorter sentences. Being that nearly half of inmates are locked up on drug offenses for ridiculous amounts of time, reducing their sentences could be the most effective and beneficial way to save taxpayers millions of dollars. Lowering the amount of time federal prisoners are required to complete from 85 percent to 70 percent of their sentence will allow for more space inside the federal prison system. Releasing more elderly prisoners from Bureau of Prisons custody may be the most effective way of reducing overcrowding next to reducing time for those convicted of drug offenses. Usually overcrowding happens when the elderly is stuck in prison for lengthy sentences and there’s nowhere for the new inmates to be housed. If we were to release some of the elderly prisoners before their sentences were up, then we could make room for those who are actually a danger to society and save taxpayers money. The elderly shouldn’t be a threat to society, especially those convicted of drug offenses. Another solution raised was to send foreign inmates back to their home countries. This would open up much more space and save a lot of money as