Determinate sentences involve sentences that have a fixed or flat time (Jirard, 2009). Determinate sentences play a large part in the increasing number of individuals in prison, which, as you can imagine, puts more strain on prisons financially. In the past two decades, we have become increasingly “tough on crime” which has helped to decrease crime to a certain extent. According to an article in the New York Times (2008), the US has fewer than five percent of the entire world’s population, but almost twenty five percent of the world’s prisoners (Liptak & , 2008). The author of the article goes on to say that people in the US are sentenced to do time for crimes that would not produce such a sentence in other countries.
Figures on the British survey state that there are 87,561 thousand people in Britain and Wales prisons today (Ministry Of Justice, 2010). This massive population in prisons has been rising sharply since 1993 and increased from 42,000 to today's unprecedented levels (Cavadino and Dignan , 2007 ).The prison population rate places England and Wales one of the highest in Western Europe with 153 people per 100,000 (Ministry Of Justice, 2010). This Essay is going to discuss and evaluate the claim that the prison system is ‘in crisis’. In order to do this, the essay will first look at the reasons for the huge rising prison population – financial, prudential and moral. Secondly overcrowded prisons have an impact on rehabilitation programmes which potentially could be a reason for the high rate of reoffending in the UK.
Another example would be that the United States gives an average burglary sentence around sixteen months, but Canada gives a sentence of five months, and in England people get about seven months. This is a rather large difference, and can explain why the United States as of 2009 holds the highest incarceration rate throughout the world at 754 inmates per 100,000 people. The war on drugs in the United States has seriously impacted the criminal justice system. There have been a lot more people arrested and sentenced for non violent crimes. This has also had a big part in the current overcrowding of the United States prisons.
The total rate of imprisonment in Australia in 1995 was 119 per 100,000 adults (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997) and 411 for the USA (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997). By the year 2008 Australia’s rate had risen to 169 (ABS, 2009), whereas the USA had a considerable increase to 760 per 100,000 adults (BJS, 2009). Female rates of imprisonments are considerably lower than men in both jurisdictions. In Australia in 1995 the rate was 12 (ABS, 1997) and the prisoner population for females in the USA at the same time was 51 (BJS, 1995). By 2008 the rates for females in Australia doubled to 24 (ABS, 2009) and in the USA increased to 67 (BJS, 2009).
THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRY The United States has more incarcerated people than any other country in the world ‒ as of 2011, over 2.3 million prisoners were locked up in local county jails and in state and federal prisons (Fisher, 2011). With more than 50 companies operating within the federal and state criminal justice system, the privatization of incarceration has become a five-billion dollar business. Several of these for profit businesses include The GEO Group, PA Child Care, and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) (Fisher, 2011). The for-profit prisons came into being because 1) the traditional prisons were getting overcrowded leading to exceptionally high price rise for the government and 2) the private prisons claimed increased, business-like efficiency along with major cost savings (Hunt, 2008). The cash-strapped communities found this idea to be irresistible.
The unemployment rate in Mexico is more than 40% although some have jobs, but are paid an average wage of $3.49 per hour and 18% live on just less than 60p per day. In 2000, unemployment rates in Mexico were at 2.2, however, in 2009, they rose by 34.43%. The GDP per person in Mexico is $9,741.79 which is below the average salary in the U.S. This attracts many people to the U.S who believe they can get much better jobs and live the American dream. 47% of the population lives under the poverty line which makes many people try and move to U.S.A to have better prospects.
The second generation earned 6.3 percent more than American-born workers in 2000, compared to nearly 15 percent more in 1970 and almost 18 percent more in 1940. Some of the difference in immigrant's earnings reflects the dramatic change in the economic and ethnic
The Comparison Between Prison and Slavery by John Dewar Gleissner The fairly new term, "mass incarceration," means that the U.S. has 2.2 million prisoners, more than any country in the world. A greater percentage of the U.S. population is in prison than in any other nation. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and almost 25% of the world's prisoners. The entire U.S. correctional population, including those on probation, on parole and awaiting trial, is about 7.3 million Americans. These eye-popping numbers came about for many reasons: mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes legislation, illegal drugs, gangs, immorality in all its modern forms, the war on drugs, the decline of marriage and families, high rates of recidivism, incarceration of the mentally ill, the decline of capital punishment, problems with the criminal justice system and all the forces pushing tough crime policies.
These high levels of incarceration have in turn made sending people to prison profitable. Mass incarceration is not only a huge problem within itself but it has additional negative effect on productivity both economic and societal, and parental availability to their children. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) reports that from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people” (“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet”, n.d.). According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “The United States imprisons more people—both per capita and in absolute terms—than any other nation in the world, including Russia, China, and Iran” (“Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration”, 2011). When a nation begins to incarcerate that many of its citizens people begin to question what exactly is causing this trend?
There’s a claim that it is more expensive for the state to execute a criminal than to incarcerate them for life. Many opponents present the fact that it is 2 million dollars per capital punishment case. While criminals that face life in prison without parole for 30 to 40 years with the annual cost of incarceration being at $40,000 to $50,000 per criminal each year. Over the span of years in prison the cost could reach 3.6 more million dollars than capital punishment.