Essay On Texas Incarceration

The United States is known for its devotion to human rights. It does not matter if the citizen has a different skin color, gender, and disabilities. The government enforces highly detailed laws that protect minorities and other endangered groups. For example, laws on parking lots and pedestrian push-to-walk buttons help protect the rights of disabled people. However, one big mistake can cost entire lives of many people. Specifically, prisoners lose many rights that prevent them from becoming well-behaved citizens. Texas suffers from a high incarceration rate and prison population because prisoners are not receiving the help they need. In the United States, Texas is known for its poor criminal justice system. Despite its efforts of being tough

BBC News states that the government closed several major prison facilities in order to focus on rehabilitation (“Why Texas is closing prisons in favor of rehab”). Rehabilitation is a more effective solution to deterring crime rate because these facilities teach criminals to avoid illegal behavior. However, Texas’s criminal justice system still has many more problems needing to be addressed, including the high poverty rate and poor public education system. Even though rehabilitation exists, families living in poor neighborhoods continue to produce potentially harmful

These poor living conditions creates a cycle of poor families producing more manufactured criminals. Education is key to turning criminals into law-abiding citizens. However, many minors do not have access to a quality public education system, and in the future, there is a chance that many of them will perform illegal activities. Loury states that “on average, state inmates have fewer than 11 years of schooling” (53-55). That is to say, most inmates dropped out of school and did not receive a high school diploma. Not only does this decrease the crime rate and incarceration rate, but it is also the gateway to many job opportunities, which too helps reduce the burden of the criminal justice system because it creates more healthy families in the next generation that encourage lawful