US Leads the World in Incarceration

The U.S. has the highest amount of its own citizens incarcerated than any other nation in the world. This presents a huge taxpayer burden and is a signal that something is wrong with our jailing system. In order to correct this, jail sentences should most likely be tailored to fit the crime. The United States leads the world in the rate at which it incarcerates its own citizens. This includes incarcerating more people than the country of China, which has about four times the population of the U.S. In other words, mass incarceration is more prevalent in the U.S. than in any other country in the world. Every year, this number seems to grow; if the U.S. were to revert back to the number of criminals that were held behind bars in the early 70s, about 80 percent of our criminals would have to be released. There are two different views on this. The first is in regards to crime rates and the necessity of punishing criminals. More than two million Americans are now locked up behind bars. Another five million are under some form of supervision for committing a crime. If there are really that many criminal in the U.S., many people argue that they deserve punishment. The second view is that too many nonviolent offenders are being punished with jail time for too long. About 60 percent of everyone who is currently incarcerated committed nonviolent crimes. With jail sentences on the rise, it is commonly agreed upon that these jail terms are just too long. Even freeing half of these-or 30 percent of those currently jailed-would free up over $17 billion per year. The problem is obvious: too much money is being spent on jails and prisons. This is usually taxpayer money, too. When you ask someone what issues are important to them, they will often give answers like education or healthcare. Punishing criminals is a priority, but not as high as these other ones. Unfortunately, more and more money is being spent on incarcerating people than ever before. Over the past 23 years, California has added a prison to their system on average once every year. The average cost for one of these prisons: $100 million each. Across the nation, spending on prisons has outpaced educational spending six times faster. How to keep our streets safe while lowering the taxpayers' costs is the big question here. Obviously, safety is important, but at the same time, having taxpayers spend so much on incarcerating people is not fair. Rather, their money should go toward something that affects them in a more direct manner. Money going toward schools or public parks is a good example that comes to mind. Criminals do deserve to be punished, but at the same time, taxpayers should not be the ones bearing the brunt of their punishment costs. Too many young people are being overly punished for nonviolent crimes. Giving them a more fitting punishment would be better for everyone involved. Community service is a good place to start. This helps keep our communities running better while sparing taxpayers the cost of warehousing these people. And since the Supreme Court declared that giving young offenders life without parole is now unconstitutional, this should slightly lower the number of young and youthful offenders behind bars. This is only a good place to start; many more reforms need to be arrived at before this broken system is fixed. About Author: This article was written by Bradley Morton, he is a law student interested in the legal discovery process and hoping to one day be an attorney. He believes that technology has the power to revolutionize legal proceedings, through things like electronic discovery somekeyword.

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