ipl-logo

Overview Of The Events Leading Up To The Corrections Explosion

687 Words3 Pages

The Corrections “explosion” in the United States refers to the increase in incarcerated individuals since the 1970s. This surge resulted in overcrowded jails and prisons. This essay will examine the events leading up to the corrections explosion. The effectiveness of suspended sentences and probation in reducing the burden on overcrowded jails and prisons will be discussed. The institutional and societal consequences of high rates of incarceration will be addressed. Events Leading Up to the Corrections Explosion Events that have led up to the corrections explosion include the 1980s War on Drugs, 1980s and 1990s mandatory minimum sentencing laws, three strike laws, and victim rights legislation (Rio Salado College, n.d.). The 1980s war on drugs …show more content…

Between 1980 and 2010, half of the 222% increase in the nationwide prison population was due to longer sentencing, with the number of prisoners servicing life sentences having increased dramatically (Fair Fight Initiative, n.d.). In previous decades, victim impact statements and truth in sentencing laws required offenders to serve approximately 50% of their sentences, now, as a result of victim’s rights legislation, offenders must serve at least 85% of their sentences (Rio Salado College, n.d.). With inmates serving more time before qualifying for parole, the incarcerated population continues to increase. Events Leading Up to the Corrections Explosion Events that have led up to the corrections explosion include the 1980s war on drugs, 1980s and 1990s mandatory minimum sentencing laws, three strike laws, and victim rights legislation (Rio Salado College, n.d.). The war on drugs in the 1980s led to the implementation of stringent drug laws. For example, the “Mass Incarceration Trends” the passage of the “Anti-Drug Abuse Act” in 1986 imposed five-year mandatory minimums for low-level drug offenses, including the possession or sale of five grams of crack cocaine (Nellis, …show more content…

If the defendant abides, the defendant does not have to serve a jail term (Sentencing Council, 2022, p. 28). Suspended sentences are effective as they promote rehabilitation by allowing offenders to maintain employment, family relationships, and ties to their community, which are critical to reintegration. Individuals sentenced to suspended sentences are less likely to reoffend than those immediately sentenced to imprisonment or community service Probation is a court-ordered period of supervision in the community, after a court determines guilt, where the defendant is allowed to remain in the community while adhering to specific rules of conduct. Failure to comply with the conditions of probation can result in revocation. Trotter’s article “Reducing Recidivism Through Probation Supervision: What We Know and Don't Know From Four Decades of Research” shows that probation can reduce recidivism, specifically if probation officers are using pro-social modeling and reinforcement, problem solving and cognitive techniques (Trotter,

Show More
Related

How Did Nixon Use Cocaine In The 1980s

1132 Words | 5 Pages

In 1995 Bill Clinton escalated the seriousness of drug crimes by establishing the “three strikes, you’re out” policy, The “three strikes, you’re out” policy declared that any person with three violent crime charges would be put on trial for a life sentence, moreover it stated that any drug felony is equivalent to a violent crime. So, with possessing marijuana, crack, or cocaine being reclassified as a felony, these minor drug offenses could turn into a lifetime sentence. From 1983 to 1989 the American prison system increased from 14,301 inmates to nearly 40,000, a 180% increase. For race, by 1989 the arrest rates for whites was 365 for every 100,000 while for blacks the rate was 1,460 per 100,000, thus the incarceration rate for blacks was four times higher

Read More

Mass Incarceration In The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

841 Words | 4 Pages

One of the major causes of the mass incarceration epidemic has been the War on Drugs, which was officially declared by President Nixon in the 1970s. Alexander notes that, despite the White House’s aggressive rhetoric, the 1960s and 1970s were a period of relatively low drug-related crime. In the forty years since the War on Drugs began, it is overwhelmingly young black men who have been arrested, convicted, and incarcerated. The racial disparity in the criminal justice system does not correspond to actual rates of drug use between blacks and whites; in reality, it is due to a legal framework that allows law enforcement to target minorities (e.g., racial profiling and stop-and-frisk) and harsh prison sentences for minor drug offenses (e.g., mandatory minimum drug sentences and three-strikes laws). As our criminal justice system offers little to incarcerated individuals in terms of rehabilitation,

Read More

The Pros And Cons Of Prisons In Tennessee

555 Words | 3 Pages

In 2014 there were 215,000 people incarcerated in federal prisons, almost half were there for drug-related offenses with the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses in the 1980s, increasing the population by more than 800 percent (Malcolm, 2014.) “Moreover, drug offenders make up the single largest category of incarcerated offenders in Tennessee, serving an average sentence of 9.7 years” (Malcolm, 2014, paragraph 21.) By limit sentencing, we can address the issues of high cost, by using probation and parole for more misdemeanor

Read More

Substance Abuse In The Other Wes Moore

774 Words | 4 Pages

While America holds 10% of the world's population, America also holds 25% of the world's jailed population. That number is baffling because one in every 4 people are jailed. This comes rise in jailing trickles down to the war on drugs in the early 70’s. In June of 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs”. He increased law enforcement agencies and mandatory sentences for people charged with drug related crimes.

Read More

California State Prison Case Study

1107 Words | 5 Pages

As of September 2011, California incarcerated close to 144,000 inmates in its state prisons. This number fell in recent years owing to the pressure from SCOTUS and California policy changes. In 2006, California had a peak incarceration rate of 172,000 inmates (Rogan, 2012). Since 1970, California has seen 750% rise in incarceration levels, especially during the “war on drugs” campaign during the 1990s (Harvard Law Review, 2010, p. 753). With no end in sight to the rapidly growing number of inmates in California’s state prisons, the CDCR was challenged to manage the growing population.

Read More

Mandatory Sentencing Laws Essay

1509 Words | 7 Pages

With the economy in the turmoil that it is in America cannot continue to support these sentencing guidelines. The Mandatory Article Sentencing declares that the laws are becoming a huge drain on the Justice Bureau’s budget, and in 2012 the United States had far beyond more people incarcerated than any other country. Most of these prisoners are low-level drug offenders sentenced under mandatory sentencing guidelines with a cost draining on American taxpayers $6.8 billion a year, as of 2012. These costs do not seem to have a ceiling and continue eating up about twenty-five percent of the federal justice system’s yearly budget.

Read More

Essay On Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

1798 Words | 8 Pages

Defined as a public policy that imposes an outlined amount of prison time based on the crime committed and the defendant’s criminal history, these sentences dictate that a judge must enact a statutory fixed penalty on individuals convicted of certain crimes, regardless of extenuating circumstances. Such laws have removed discretionary sentencing power from judges, instead focusing on severe punishments in line with national drug and crime concerns. While the original goal of mandatory minimum sentences was to deter potential criminals, reduce drug use, control judicial prudence, the policy has had extreme consequences such as sentencing imbalances and

Read More

Mass Incarceration Literature Review

1728 Words | 7 Pages

The current system that incarcerates people over and over is unsustainable and does not lower the crime rate nor encourage prisoner reformation. When non-violent, first time offenders are incarcerated alongside violent repeat offenders, their chance of recidivating can be drastically altered by their experience in prison. Alternative sentencing for non-violent drug offenders could alleviate this problem, but many current laws hinder many possible solutions. Recently lawmakers have made attempts to lower the recidivism rates in America, for example the Second Chance Act helps aid prisoners returning into society after incarceration. The act allows states to appropriate money to communities to help provide services such as education, drug treatment programs, mental health programs, job corps services, and others to aid in offenders returning to society after incarceration (Conyers, 2013).

Read More

Get Tough On Crime Essay

1645 Words | 7 Pages

The sophisticated process of how offenders are processed through each stage of the criminal justice system reveals a complex network of policies, steps, and perspectives that aim to maintain social harmony and reduce crime rates. In this narrative essay, I will delve into the journey of an inmate through the system, evaluate the effectiveness of “Get Tough on Crime” measures, analyze the role of the corrections system in rehabilitation, and discuss mandatory minimum sentences. It also explores and questions the concept of punishment for theft, defines deterrence and discusses its types, considers the Three-Strikes Laws, and examines the advantages of moving from fixed to flexible

Read More

Arguments Against Mandatory Minimums

766 Words | 4 Pages

The initial thinking behind the creation of minimum mandatory sentences was created by congress to aim in the capture and imprisonment of high level drug traffickers, and deter others from entering into drug trafficking or using illegal substances, which would create a safer society. However, the nation prison has been expanded with low level street drug dealers, and the accessibility to illegal drugs is more obtainable then before the enactment of the mandatory sentencing act. In fact, the number of drug offenders in federal prisons has increased 21 times since 1980. Contrary to what congress has believed in the past about the dangers of crack cocaine compared to that in powder form has been proven to be untrue, but little has been done to reduce the number of prisons affected by that belief.

Read More

Essay On Mass Incarceration

1087 Words | 5 Pages

In the 1970s the United States entered the era known as mass incarceration, the byproduct of the drug war. The War on Drugs changed how society handled drug dependency, diverting the problem from public health to criminal justice. Since the Nixon administration, the political stance on being tough on crime has resulted in various laws and policing practices that heavily criminalized drugs to point in which the prison population in the United States increased from 300,000 people in 1972 to 2.3 million today (Barish, DuVernay, Averick & DuVernay, 2016). The epidemic of mass incarceration corresponds to a variety of public health issues such as mental illness, increased violence within society, increased incidence of addictions, and increased incidence of chronic illnesses (Drucker, 2013).

Read More

Tough On Crime Policy Analysis

784 Words | 4 Pages

In addition to greatly affecting the otherwise unlikely citizens of America, Tough on Crime policies have greatly affected minority groups in America; perhaps more so than of any other group of citizens. To begin, from the 1980 on through the year 1995, the incarceration rates among drug offenders increased by more than 1000 percent. Notably, by the year 1995 one out of every four inmates in any given correctional facility was a drug offender. In addition of that 1000 percent increase, drug offenders accounted for more than 80 percent of the total growth in the federal inmate population and 50 percent of the growth of the state prison population from 1985 to 1995 (Stith, web). In addition, once in the system, the probability of receiving harsher

Read More

Persuasive Essay On Prison Reform

707 Words | 3 Pages

In 1972, former President Richard Nixon made his infamous statements regarding crime and drug abuse. In this speech, he declared a war on crime and drugs and intended to decrease the number of people using drugs and the amount of crimes that were committed. Since this declaration, incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up by 500%, even though the amount of crime happening has gone down. One of the reasons why I feel our rates have risen, is because sometimes, we put people in jail when they don’t need to be there in the first place.

Read More

Sentencing In Corrections

385 Words | 2 Pages

TITLE OR PURPOSE An effort to retroactivly change the current system of corrections in revielence to non-violent drug offenses. MAJOR AREAS TO BE AFFECTED The largest area to be affected is the present system of sentencing that has been set up for non-violent drug offenses by the Department of Justice and the Department of Corrections. JUSTIFICATION Today, the average federal prison is overcrowed by 36 percent.

Read More

Criminal Justice System Essay

721 Words | 3 Pages

In the criminal justice system, the corrections component is also responsible for the rehabilitation of the convicted individual. It is their duty to attempt to make the defendant a productive member of society once again. Based on the individual’s behavior while incarcerated, the court and corrections officials may decide to place them on parole, which ensures that the individual will comply with the rules of society once they are fully released from the system. The criminal justice system is an essential role in the organizational structure of not only the United States but also in countries around the world. If there were no criminal justice system to administer punishment, the world would be unstructured, disorganized, unjustified, cruel, and not to mention a chaotic place for it citizens.

Read More

More about Overview Of The Events Leading Up To The Corrections Explosion

Open Document