South Carolina Corrections Case Study

Introduction
The topic of this paper is the South Carolina Department of Corrections. This agency was selected due to the authors’ current major of Criminal Justice. While attending classes at Tri-County Technical College I have covered many aspect of the criminal justice system as a whole along with the area of corrections. Although I am familiar with the topic, this will be in depth to the South Carolina Department of Corrections and how this agency interacts within the state government. The goal will be to apply an insight to corrections as a whole, how these state departments functions, and provide research on the details for this agency.
Overview of Corrections
Corrections is a term used to describe the punishment of criminals for the

More focus was placed on rehabilitation programs in order to focus on recidivism in prisons. Long term offenders were placed under state supervision rather than county jails. Due to major increases in the prison population several forms of legislation and programs were created to reduce the number of incarcerated inmates. In the late 1970’s the Extended Work Release Program was approved by the Legislature to allow eligible inmates to live and work in the community under intensive supervision during the final stages of their sentences and the Litter Control Act was passed where inmates are allowed to earn time credits towards their sentences. In the 1980’s the Community Corrections Act was enacted to establish the Supervised Furlough Program, the Prison Overcrowding Powers Act authorized the Governor to declare a state of emergency when certain conditions of overcrowding exist and the Omnibus Criminal Justice Improvements Act was passed to modify the procedures allowed in the Prison Overcrowding Powers Act for early release. There were two class action lawsuits involving overcrowding in state prisons and as a result the South Carolina Department of Corrections began efforts to eliminate overcrowding and make other improvements in the 1990’s. Beginning in the early 2000’s there was a large decline in state revenues and as a result the South Carolina Department of Corrections budget was drastically cut. A 21% reduction, the largest correction reduction of any system in the country, caused the department to cut staff and also cut several non-security personnel form the prison system. Today the South Carolina Department of Corrections reports directly to the Governor. The Department of Corrections currently has approximately 5,700 employees and 22,000 incarcerated inmates in 26 facilities in the state. (Government,