The United States has 5 percent of the world population, and it has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Mass Incarceration is a menace to American people, America is the world leader in mass incarceration. According to the Bureau of Justices Statistics (Statistics, 2016), an estimated of 6.6 million individuals incarcerated in state and federal prison at the end of 2016, roughly 874,800 were under correctional supervision. Law-makers send people to prison to be punished and to deter others from breaking the law. Prison is essential, but it should be kept for those who commit the most dangerous criminal offenses and those who present a danger to society. Thus, we should exclude maximum minimum to non-violent offenders, and prison population might decline 25%, and as a result, we will be creating a better criminal justice system that would lead to a less offender in prison.
Incarceration in the criminal justice system is a definite form of punishment with negative consequences as a result of this form of punishment. The opinion differs with the type of individual, and their experience with prison if they are any. The United States has an enormous percentage of its population incarcerated today; There are roughly 6.6 million people that are imprisoned today, over the last 30 years that number has increased over 400%.
Some studies have found that mass incarceration does not deter crime they somewhat increase their likelihood of offense in the future, as in a few cases it acts as a school of crime. Mass incarceration drives poverty, racial injustices and economic inequality to another level. America is good at punishment. If we think that finding a job in the Americas is hard, it is more difficult to get a job once an individual has a conviction on their record.
The policy-makers seem to be; if someone commits a felony, we give up on you. However, how did we get here? In response of the crime rates of the 1980s, policymakers enacted the Sentencing Guidelines Act of 1984 which target drug actively relates offenses and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which established 5 and 10-year mandatory minimum statutes for drug trafficking (Clear, 2014). The constant re-offenses and a new manner of mayhem committed by repeat offenders, let to the legislature to enact the Three-Strikes laws, in California which was somewhat like mandatory sentences which required longer sentences for the third offense and punish minor, non-violent crimes with the penalty of twenty-five years to life without parole. (Clear & Frost, 2013, pp.78). These wars on crime, the war on drugs are wars on people. Law-makers appeal though on crime, because a crime may scare people, so they increase sentences, they arrest more people, they send more people to prison. That is how lawmakers looked tough on crime. However, the result is it is a bad policy.
Meanwhile, policy-makers should replace mandatory sentencing laws with more flexible and individualized ones. However, first, lawmakers should consider risk assessment as a tool to identify low levels, of how dangerous non-violent and violent inmates are. These tools which have been used over the last decades by parole boards, civil commitment and so on helps them to identify those who can safely return to communities (Kopkin et al.,. 2017, pp. 155-164). The idea of include these tools before exclude them from mandatory sentencing is to use a variation of facts about offenders criminal history, mental health illness and prison record to anticipate whether he or she is likely to recidivism (Kopkin, 2017). It is impossible for politics to release violent offenders, the preferred form might be redefining who are violent in the first place.
Also, according to Pfaff (2017), “In 2013 the state and county governments spend over $200 billion in corrections facilities” (p.94). Incarceration cost is to people, to our country, to communities, to families and ourselves.
Reducing mass incarceration today is one of the most significant problems that lawmakers are facing. Their attention diversifies from the higher cost of prison to civil right movements. According to Pfaff “In 2013 the state and the county government spend over $200 billion in corrections facilities” (p.94). Spending enormous taxpayer’s money on corrections facilities withdrawn from the community especially from the poor. Approximately 600,000 offenders that are released every year faced long-term unemployment, disenfranchisement, housing, family reunification, and welfare nor to mention the consequences on children’s. (Krupat, 2018). Excluding mandatory sentencing laws as an option for low level or non-violent offenders