Crowding Impact in the Prison System essays

Crowding Impact in the Prison System essays Prison overcrowding is one of the biggest challenges facing the corrections system today, and nowhere is it a bigger problem than in the State of California, where "The number of drug offenders imprisoned in the state today is more than twice the number of inmates who were imprisoned for all crimes in 1978" (Schlosser). Much of this overcrowding directly results from increased "war on drugs" in the past decade. Expert Schlosser continues, "During the past two decades roughly a thousand new prisons and jails have been built in the United States. Nevertheless, America's prisons are more overcrowded now than when the building spree began, and the inmate population continues to increase by 50,000 to 80,000 people a Many experts agree that not only are our prisons dangerously overcrowded, they are at the breaking point mostly because of the war on drugs, and that war on drugs has become a massive societal failure. It is costing the nation's taxpayers massive amounts of money in new prisons and to keep prisoners incarcerated, and yet drug use continues unchecked in many of our major metropolitan areas. The war on drugs is not working - rather, it is a criminal justice nightmare playing itself out in the judicial and prison systems of our nation. California is at the lead in overcrowding problems created largely by the war on drugs. The problem is so bad that arrests are not being made throughout the state, because there is simply nowhere to put the accused, the jails are already filled to capacity. "The state's backlog of arrest warrants now stands at about 2.6 million the number of arrests that have not been made, the report says, largely because there's no room in the jails" (Schlosser). Often, judges release lawbreakers held for lesser offenses to make room for criminals with more violent and dangerous backgrounds. In fact, while it would be ...