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High Incarceration In Prisons

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High Incarceration In Prisons
The United States has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world with currently 2.2 million people in US prison and jails – a 500% increase over the last forty years. According to The Sentencing Policy, changes in sentencing and law policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. This has resulted in overcrowding in prisons and has become a financial burden on states because they have to adjust to the growing prison system, even though it has been found that high incarceration is not an effective way to achieve public safety.
The War on Drugs era has resulted in a huge growth in incarceration for drug offenses. In 1980, about 40,900 people were put in jail for drug offenses and today that number has grown to about
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