Arguing to help convicted felons isn’t something that on first glance seems very appealing or necessary to most people. Whether these people feel this way because they think as though felons already blew their chance in society or simply because they believe it doesn’t affect them, it doesn’t change the fact there is a huge problem, one that has been, but shouldn’t be ignored, one that affects every American in some way. This issue being Prison Overcrowding. Overcrowding in the Public American Prison system today creates a major financial burden to the American tax payer due to the systems ineffectiveness in helping rehabilitate the prisoners it houses. The reason I feel this to be true was through research that started very broadly on prison overcrowding and if our prisons needed reform. After reading just a few articles I could immediately come to the conclusion that the answer was yes, we need reform but the issues go very deep when it comes to overcrowding, a lot deeper then how simple the issue initially sounded. Issues such as, increased prisoner violence and facilities becoming run down or overused. Problems such as mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent criminals or the difficulties that come along with being an ex-convict. And the repercussions of these problems, such as very high rates of recidivism and higher taxes for those American citizens not in prison. These are just some of the major points in breaking down Americas issue of overcrowding. To some however, they don’t see prison overcrowding as a sign of failure, they see it as a strength, they see it as our Government keeping us safe. While this does sound like something that is somewhat reasonable to think, it isn’t a valid argument to keep the prisons and the set up the way it is and continue to let our overpopulation problem spiral out of control. Just the simple fact that the United States incarcerates “more people per capita than any other nation, whether industrialized, democratic, undemocratic or developing” (Bosworth. 14), shows that this a real problem and a big one at that. The issues importance is not only reinforced on the monetary side in that every American of age pays taxes but also an issue of human rights due to these prisons being unconstitutionally run down and overcrowded. 

Coming into the assignment with a nearly blank slate in terms of knowledge on the subject made it easy to see the facts as they were with essentially no bias to affect my conclusions on the subject. Seeing the constant close connection between the money and the prisoners is what made me identify these two separate issues as one because even if the United States Government is only trying to addresses one, inevitably the other feels the repercussions of that action. However, even though they are related they are definitely not the same because I believe one is fundamentally more important than the other. In fact, the unconstitutionality of our severely overcrowded prisons is why I eventually chose the subject. In the first article, in its first sentence of the article it stated “Imagine a society where convicts were sentenced to death by untreated renal failure or denial of chemotherapy. Modern Americans would surely consider such a place barbaric and cruel” (Mayeux). He later went on to describe prisons in America that were having “a preventable or possibly preventable death occurred somewhere in California's prison system once every five to six days” (Mayeux). This insane case was dealt with as California admitted that the conditions of their prisons did violate the prisoners’ rights stated in Eight Amendment but the state did not actually want to do anything to fix it. This made me think about how many other places had the same problem, considering almost all prisons are dealing with overcrowding as well as being understaffed, like this one. Which leads you right back on the money trail, the only way that they want to fight this problem is by hiring more which obviously would require more money. This is just a band aide on an ever bleeding wound because if the prisons do decide to hire more staff by the time they get trained and can do their job they are already understaffed again. While it may be relatively easy to look at the facts and see that there is an issue at hand, actually fixing it is a totally the issue is different story, a story that is as long as our country’s history but was only made as bad as it is today by litigation passed within the last half century. 

While there is a much older and larger problem in terms of why prisons work and target the people they do, there is a more recent and specific time frame that can be identified as where a lot of the modern issues stem from. This would be the late 70’s to the late 80’s where new laws and extremely aggressive policing began many trends, most of which have ended up being negative in nature. The real start of what made this time the way it was the Presidential Election of 1980, won by Ronald Reagan, who famously along with his wife Nancy started the war on drugs campaign. This wasn’t something new to the white house with Nixon saying the same thing just a few years earlier, however Reagan was different and wanted to combat drugs very militaristically and very aggressively. By 1986 Reagan had signed a bill that gave “1.7 Billion dollars” to fight the war and also signed off on mandatory minimum sentence laws, as well as laws that made the punishment for crack cocaine way hasher then those arrested with regular powdered cocaine even though the only difference between the two was who generally used them (Leaply. 3). This drastically increased the African American presence within the American public prison system.  “Not only did the number of minorities behind bars grow rapidly- culminating in 1989 when Black prisoners outnumber Whites for the first time- but so, too, did the number of women in prison as well as an increased number of Juveniles into Adult prison” (Bosworth. 177-178). 

Even though this drastic change in population type and numbers was happening and money was being pumped through the police forces veins to arrest more people and be stricter nobody addressed the issue of where to put all of these newly minted criminals. The American government was not concerned though and was staunchly against building new prisons even though there was major support to be tough on crime. The reluctance to build these new prisons was on account of a few things. The first being the “Not in my back yard” mentality which was the obvious lack of support from the people around where ever they were trying to build a prison (Guetzkow. Schoon. 405). Next, during this time there was a lot of issues and problems in the economy so spending money wasn’t something the Government really wanted to be doing anyway. Which leads into the final point which is that they especially didn’t want to be spending the little money they did have on what was “viewed as benefitting prisoners – an extremely unsympathetic population with virtually no political power” (Guetzkow. Schoon. 405). Adding on top of the fact that poor minorities and specifically black people were the ones feeling the brunt of this because of the system already targeting them as the easiest group to incarcerate and the group that would put up the least fight because of the lack of financial backing and institutional racism already present. The three strike laws which are still in place today in some places were also implemented. The three strike laws were an even harsher form of mandatory minimum sentencing, that would attempt and often ended up succeeding in giving people who were convicted of two or more felonies (deemed of a serious nature) very limited sentencing options besides life in prison. This laid a fundamentally fractured groundwork for the prisons to overpopulate in Americas jails and for that system to be in the shape it’s in today.

The blame cannot solely be placed on the law makers and arresting officers because in reality half the problem is that the jails don’t do anything to rehabilitate its prisoners so when the majority come in they leave worse than how they arrived. This is how the cycle of recidivism works and why would the somewhat corrupted prisons want to use their money on helping, there is way more profit in letting the prisoners become more hardened criminals so that the likelihood of them returning higher. The problem here is also for the tax payer in that they are going to have to help pay for every time the felon goes back. Probation and the strict terms that come along with it are also a key contributor in the return of felons back to prison. Even the smallest little thing can land an ex con on probation back in jail. Parole violations account for a huge amount of American prisoners today which has compounded the issue. The best example of bad it’s gotten is California who has had their policies increase “prison population by 572% in thirty years” (Sundt. 3). If some form of effective rehabilitation could be established these number could drop drastically. While some prisons do have programs it’s not enough, the most effective way to combat recidivism is to make it easier for the felons to get legal work opportunities when they are released. 

This argument is with a seemingly faceless foe who has their actions speak far louder then their words so as they can hide in anonymity and continue to profit from the flawed system. But there are also other people who oppose some reforms for various reasons. One being that everyone has the same rules and that its their fault they broke them, which is true but not really addressing the problem in that people’s circumstances are way different and that the laws in the first place are too strict and punish too severely, especially with non-violent crime. One proposal of some new reform in California was to release 27,500 inmates “in an act of mass forgiveness” (Jackman.) This had a lot of people worried about an increase in crime but in fact crime stayed at the exact same level for the most part in the start with some areas even having a reduction in crime numbers. 

Something that shouldn’t be looked past is the political side of the topic of reform. Which is among a rare group of topics that both major political parties seem to be for. Both liberals and conservatives agree that reform or major changes are needed, however they don’t even have the same reasons why. The liberal side tends to lean more on the creating opportunities for ex-convicts so they aren’t trapped by unemployment their whole life because of just one mistake. It’s definitely a big issue, “a person's chances at a callback interview for an entry-level job dropped by 50% when that applicant had a criminal history” (Jackman.) Conservative play even more of a surprising roll in that, if conservatives stick to the fundamentals of the party, like cutting spending, public safety (prisoners come out worse than when they arrive), and giving jobs to more Americans then they have even more at stake. For example, “The prison system now costs states more than $50 billion a year, up from about $9 billion in 1985” (Viguerie). So for once you would think something may actually get done but then the stark reality of politics hit and you realize everything almost always moves at the pace of a glacier but progress is being made. 

As stated earlier many states are going back and getting rid of some of the more obviously laws that were considered somewhat blunders. Such as the laws that made crack cocaine worse in the eyes of the law then regular cocaine as well as some states removing the three strikes laws or participating in a massive nonviolent criminal release like California did. Drug crimes in general are taking up a large portion of the population which is why former U.S. Attorney general Eric Holder gave a speech saying they fewer nonviolent drug cases would be brought to federal court. The mandatory sentencing is also slowly moving away from the olden days of 5- 20 years minimum for drug offences thanks to a recently proposed bill that “would cut the length of those mandatory prison sentences in half” (Knafo.)

Addressing and directly reforming instead of trying “short term fixes to a perpetual problem” will be the key to fixing the American Public prison system (Pitts.) I’m not saying to blow everything and restart, that just isn’t realistic but with some drastic changes a lot could be done in solving the issue. Starting with the earlier mentioned three strikes law which needs to be gotten rid of because in almost all the cases the criminal ends up having to serve way too much time for the level of crime they commit. The next would lowering the truth in sentencing law that currently makes you serve at least 85% of your time. While I don’t know exactly what it should be reduced to it shouldn’t be gotten rid of but definitely altered drastically.  Finally, deporting prisoners back to their home country would help clear up space in prison as well as get rid of people who are here illegally doing illegal things. If these steps along with really any other method of reducing prisoners besides executing them would be a huge help in what will be an ongoing and uphill battle. But for the first time in nearly 50 years’ things seem like they could fundamentally change in terms of the pattern of over incarcerating American citizens

Hopefully after reading and thinking about this topic the question is no longer “Why the American Prison System has a problem in overcrowding and should the answer to this problem be reform”, But simply an answer which is yes. Yes, to prison reform and the changes that need to come with it and this should be a matter of when not if. The problems accompanied by overcrowding still loom rather large but there are ways to fix it and to break up the cycle that has been going on now for way to many years now. Rehabilitating the prisoners and the prisons themselves would be the best and biggest way to really change the culture, the system is established and has been long before I was born and will be here when I die but that doesn’t mean that the same system can’t be changed. In fact, it has to be changed, we as a society have just moved past a lot of these old outdated and in some cases racist laws that pull many people down. The reforms discussed would make life easier on the criminal, but only by the fact that the prisons should make their life better, prison should be the low point you can pull yourself out of once you’ve changed not the place where you become a better criminal and sink even deeper into that world. Helping people is a pretty simple and easy thing to do, convicts are people too, that have just made mistakes and punishing somebody for an entire life time instead of the legitimate sentence just isn’t helping. 

 