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Politicization Of Prison Population By Alfred Blumstein

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This article, written by Alfred Blumstein, focuses on the issue of prison population. Blumstein indicates that the dramatic rise is not a result of one sole factor, but rather a result of several. These several factors include imprisonment policies becoming increasingly politicized, the changing of the age composition of the country’s population most likely due to the baby boom after World War II, and the extreme overrepresentation of blacks in prisons. Blumstein states that this overrepresentation cannot be completely due to racial discrimination by authorities, but most likely due to blacks’ “differential involvement in those kinds of crime for which prison sentences are often imposed” (Blumstein, 1988, p. 231). Finally, Blumstein proposes three approaches to alleviate the issue of prison overcrowding. …show more content…

He talks about how with indeterminate sentencing, judges could use their discretion to set minimums and maximums for sentences being issued to offenders (Blumstein, 1988, p. 241). The change to determinate sentencing did not allow for a broad range to be attributed to an offender’s sentence. As such, determinate sentences were adjusted to be longer thereby increasing the prison population (Blumstein, 1988, p.

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