Free Custom «The Prisoners in the USA» Essay Paper

The enormous influx of prisoners in the USA started in late 1970s and early 1980s and revolutionized the national prison population. The unprecedented prison growth indicated that the system’s population grew rapidly making it impossible for prison officers to keep track of names and locations of all relevant facilities in the prison system, which in turn made the supervisory and overseeing process complicated (Lemert, 1993). The Bureau of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation released statistics of 896 000 assaults, 40 600 robberies and 8 400 rapes, out of which over 15000 rapes were reported in 2000 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2006).

The overcrowding of prisons and the failure of parole and probation systems are currently stern problems, which is faced with by the American Judicial system. It is observed that those prisoners, which were previously released from prisons on the basis of decongestion procedures, do undergo feeble supervision, that is, a factor that offers an opportunity of committing another crime, when they are back on American streets. From late 1980s towards early 1990, the federal government formulated tougher regulations on crimes enacting the legislation that ensured mandatory sentences for replicate offenders, which was known as a “three-strikes-an- you’re-out” law in California. In this legislation, New York City adopted the “Broken-Windows” strategy that advocated for the prosecution on all crimes despite its magnitude (Feeley, & Simon, 1992). The enactment of this policy impacted the overall number of victims of violent crimes, which reduced from 620 per 100 000 in 1985 and to 460 per 100 000 in 2005.

 

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California and Texas are ranked as the largest prisons in the American prison system. They have experienced analogous extraordinary rates of rapid growth in their population. The number of prisoners in California prison rose from 20 000 in 1970s to about 160 000 in 2005 making funding logistics difficult because of the growth pace. There was also an alarming growth rate in Texas prison, where the population of inmates doubled within a decade.

According to the previous study, it is evident that a captivity mechanism is relevant. The scarcity of space in prisons for convicted criminals in tenure of serving their judgment in U.S. prisons is of major focus (McGuire & Pastore, 2001). The statistics on Californian prisons indicates that for every new criminal convicted, it is compulsory to release another one, according to the Parole in the process of fulfilling a comply of federal courts in relation to the measures reducing overcrowding in prisons.

According to the 2005 statistics on federal prisons, there was a regular overload of 134%, while state prisons operated with an overload of 107% of its capacity. This led to the declaration of California prison as the most overcrowded prison in the USA.

In regard with the hearing of the case of prison overcrowding by the three-judge panel, it was declared that the State Prison System was a key factor hindering the performance of CDCR concerning the inmates’ health care (Hill &Harrison, 2000). In this case, the court ordered the state to work out a proper plan stipulating necessary measures that would be used in the process of executing the reduction of prison overcrowding. The ruling favoured those inmates, which were under CDCR, and did not disqualify the USA from apprehending other offenders using public or private amenities. Schwarzenegger’s administration handed in a proposal plan on the means of reducing overcrowding of Californian prison. Compliance measures necessary for the depopulation were included in the plan. These measures included the revolution of parole practices, the expansion of contracts provided for prison facilities and setting up new prisons to curb the population.

However, Schwarzenegger’s plan was discarded, since it could only lower the population by about 151% within two years. After the refusal, Schwarzenegger’s administration forwarded a revised edition of the plan in November, 2009, focusing those measures that needed to be prioritized. The state also added a new sentencing law, proposed for an amendment in order to attain the limit of 137% in Californian prisons. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared the state of emergency caused by the alarming rate of overcrowding in prisons. In response to it, Californian Lawmakers elaboraed a plan of decongesting prisons costing the state more than $7 billion. The increase in the population of criminals brought about a negative impact on the overall performance of the Parole and Probation Systems (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2006). The present statistics states that there are 3% of those unconfined on private bail bonds on 10% of criminals.

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There is a need for lawmakers to get acquainted with the failure of the current system by means of the ample supervision of criminals, since they have failed to take them back to custody, when found in inappropriate behaviour. Parole and probation administrators contact with criminals within 5-20 minutes during the whole month.