The Economic Effects Of Overpopulated Prisons - 1500 Words

The Economic Effects of Overpopulated Prisons in the United States: Christopher Polinsky, Ronald Stewart, Ryan Thornton, and Skipper Schuyler Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Prepared for Dr. Kasthuri Henry ESTIS Visiting Assistant Professor September 25, 2016 Of the nearly nine million people incarcerated worldwide, the United States houses over two million inmates in its federal, state, and local facilities. While the goal of the judicial system is to enforce the law and protect the people, it comes at a price to taxpaying citizens at approximately thirty-nine billion dollars annually. The purpose of this research is to clearly define the required expenditures of the prison system, identify anomalies in court sentencing at the federal, state and local levels, and pinpoint cost-savings to reduce the financial burden to tax-paying citizens. The United States has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world and it has a direct effect on its taxpaying citizens at nearly 39 billion dollars annually. There are six major categories of incarceration: sexual assault, murder, robbery, assault, burglary, and drugs and of the nearly 2.3 million people in American jails, about approximately half, were jailed for drug related charges. According to the Department of Justice, that number has only dipped below fifty percent once in the last decade back in 2011. (Sledge, 2013). The Smarter Sentencing Act is legislature aimed at reducingShow MoreRelatedMarijuana Should Be Legal For Recreational Use873 Words   |  4 Pagesas those for cancer patients. Revised: There will be medical benefits if marijuana was legal for recreational use. Premise: Street justice related to drug disputes would be reduced resulting in less crowding in prisons. Revised: Legalizing marijuana will result in less crowding in prisons. Premise: States gain profit from taxing marijuana Revised: States benefit financially from the legalization of marijuana. Conclusion: Marijuana should be legal for recreational use. Marijuana has been usedRead MoreThe Unconstitutional Horrors Of Prison Overcrowding934 Words   |  4 PagesUNCONSTITUTIONAL HORRORS OF PRISON OVERCROWDING. The article is preceded with an illustration of a jail cell in Texas where a prisoner would wait to be executed. The author starts her article off with a hypothetical scenario involving convicts being executed entirely based on their healthiness. She went on to reference the 2011 Supreme Course Brown v. Plata. Mayeux mentions how the most functional of prisons have a difficult time employing certified medical staff. This prison in California was builtRead MorePrison Blues : How America s Foolish Sentencing Policies Endanger Public Safety1033 Words   |  5 Pagesestablished that the current policy does not work as it was intended to, so thus it must be changed. William Rehnquist, a former Supreme Court Justice, stated his opinion of minimum sentencing during an often cited speech. As stated in his book Prison blues: How Amer ica s Foolish Sentencing Policies Endanger Public Safety, David Kopek credits Rehnquist with stating: These mandatory minimum sentences are perhaps a good example of the law of unintended consequences. There is a respectable body ofRead MoreQuestion and Answer on Contemporary Social Issues Essay1411 Words   |  6 Pages1. One of the most significant changes taking place in the past few decades, the one that has had a pronounced effect on millions of families, causing considerable concern, has been the movement of women into the workplace. This change has had momentous effects on women, on children, on men, on marital relations- on families. Since 1970s, according to the demand for low-paying â€Å"pink-collar†, women moved into those pink-collar jobs and into other jobs as well. The number of hiring women has steadilyRead MoreSentencing Guidelines For Non Violent Drug Offenders1371 Words   |  6 PagesThe United States’ prison population is currently number one in the world. As a nation that proclaims freedom for citizens, the United States houses more than one mill ion more persons than Russian and almost one million more persons than China. Currently, the United States makes up five percent of the world’s population and imprisons twenty-five percent of the world’s inmate population. Drug offenders who committed no act of violence make up a large portion of the inmates in the United States. CountyRead MoreMandatory Minimum Sentencing Laws For Drug Offences1089 Words   |  5 Pagesfacts and real life examples to emphasize the economic and social consequences of mandatory minimum sentencing. The report explains that mandatory minimums allow the amount and type of drug to decide the sentencing, not the judge. This is especially problematic because it prevents judges from considering the facts of the case and viewing them individually, creating inherently unfair sentencing that sends an unproportionate amount of people to prison. The report states that â€Å"drug defendants compriseRead MoreUniversity versus Vocational Education E ssay1556 Words   |  7 Pagesusually utilizes the current economic state of the labor market, providing professional education to those fields of expertise which has a demand for new workers. That is, if there is a need of high-level professionals in agriculture, then more vocational courses will be provided in order create the required labor force for agriculture industry. Article by Silberman (1978, pp.167-176) discusses the superiority of vocational education compared to general education in economic sense. Vocational educationRead MoreThe Slavery Of Slavery And Slavery1505 Words   |  7 PagesPig Laws went into effect around the same time of Black Codes and they harshly penalized Black Americans for petty crimes such as handing out felonies for stealing farm animals. Both Black Codes and Pig Laws were repealed by 1877 but rewritten into Jim Crow Laws, which enforced racial segregation and were a way continue to treat African Americans as inferior (Black). All three of these oppressive laws have habitually traversed into the justice system today. Prisons are overpopulated with Africans AmericansRead MoreJonathan Swift s A Modest Proposal1859 Words   |  8 Pagesforefront of literature in the form of multiple well known Horatian, Juvenalian and Menippean satires (wiseGEEK). The essayist often brought a profound examination and keen persuasive rhetoric that exposed insincere idiocies and outlined the moral and economic decay (wiseGEEK). Satirical works often highlight ideals of reason, order, and social awareness, and thus these works contain a persistent undertone of civility (Holmes). The author superficially uses a faà §ade of conventional traditions, edicts,Read MoreA Study On My Service Learning Partner1717 Words   |  7 PagesEcuadorians are well dressed and are good looking. From the pictures of Ecuador my initial response was that Ecuador has really nice landscape but because of the layout of the Ecuador I came to believe Ecuador is over popu lated. Places that are overpopulated usually live in poverty because they have a hard time keeping up economically and this leads to further issues. As it turns out, my initial thought of Ecuador are along the same lines of truth that Ecuadorians actually experience these problems