Prison Incarceration In America

In America currently there are about 2.3 million people that are incarcerated. The U.S. accounts

for only 5 percent of the entire world’s population yet it holds around 25 percent of those people as the

world’s prisoners. That is an astonishing number. Crime rates have grown over the years and don’t seem

to be slowing down very much. This alone is a big cause to the debt in America as money gets poured

into these prisons in order to maintain them; it is a nightmare. I believe that a tremendously big part of

this number is people who get sent back to prison after being released. This is due to a system where

prisoners seem to not be highly encouraged to change who they are and be better members of society

while incarcerated. If more prisoners

This can lead to them changing as a person which is what we would

want; a changed person to come out of those prison doors and back into society for another chance.

Involving higher education in prisons would help stop the revolving door of the ghetto-to- prison that has

now helped build America to be in this current time of mass incarceration. It would return these

prisoners to our society as more job ready than when they went in and be able to legitimately support

their families and be less of a threat to society than before. This wouldn’t always be the case but you

would see a drastic change in the number of re-incarcerations.

I would love to see a time where the system helps people get their life together and doesn’t

prejudge and keep people in a hamster ball so to speak. College-in- prison programs are called

“incredible”, “shocking” and “insulting” to people who are actually law abiding and in college making

themselves better naturally. This was a statement made by the Republicans back in 2014. Bill Clinton

signed into legislation that inmates would be ineligible for Pell grants which at the time funded

We are paying too much for

prisons and this can be greatly reduced I believe. The goal of going to prison in my opinion is to have

that person change, realize what they’ve done and have a form of normalization practiced in the prisons

so they have that preparation for re-assimilation into the normal world. Don’t get me wrong, SOME

inmates do not deserve a second change to be with society again. Those I would consider to be the

more heinous of crimes. I’m referring to the medium to lesser charges, including drug charges and

immigration. There is a whole spectrum however of those lesser charges those inmates could benefit

from in this way of prison education.

In conclusion, a change must be made to the way government runs the prisons and what could

be beneficial to make this change and what is currently not working. The number of inmates is one of

those changes that could be extremely beneficial, not only to society but also to those specific

individuals who have minor charges and deserve a second chance. The women and men that do ever get

this second chance at life, truly never get a real second chance if they are not assisted with tools to