OPPapers.com

Overcrowded Jails

Overcrowded Jails
Jails are overcrowded.   Furthermore, jails often function as "schools for crime" in which petty lawbreakers learn to become hardened criminals.   Of course, it is necessary to put violent criminals in jail in order to protect others.   But society would benefit if nonviolent criminals received punishments other than jail sentences.
We can see examples of overcrowded jails all over the US and even out of the US. "California's prison system, originally designed for 100,000 inmates, currently houses 173,000 inmates and has resorted to housing approximately 17,000 inmates in temporary beds in locations like prison gymnasiums"(Sung). In December of 2006, California's state prisons' 70% overcapacity with 173,000 inmates led US District Judge Lawrence Karlton to warn that if in 6 months the situation wasn't resolved, he would order the release of prisoners before their sentences were finished. High state officials scrambled to find remedies to this problem. A $8.3 billion dollar program to construct facilities to provide 53,000 new prison and jail beds was approved as an effort to remedy the state's overcrowded prisons. There are also plans to increase rehabilitation in an attempt to reduce California's 60 percent reconviction rate. Schwarzenegger announced that convicts of nonviolent crimes were to be released before their sentence was completed in order to help relieve the state's prison system of the overcrowding problem.
California is not the only state with overcrowded jails. Philadelphia prisons are so overcrowded that they are violating inmate's constitutional rights and so need court monitoring. Judge Surrick wrote: "The conditions include the failure to provide beds and bedding, the failure to provide material for personal hygiene including soap, warm water, toothpaste, toothbrushes and shower facilities, unsanitary and unavailable toilet facilities, the failure to provide for the medical needs of detainees..." (qtd. in Hrubos).
The United...