The U.S. Prison System
By
Kenneth J. McCormick
Http://aboutfacts.net
The U.S. in now in the position of having the largest prison population in the world. How can this be, when we are not the most populous country? Well there could be many reasons for this. It could be that many people who should be in jail in other countries aren”t, the statistics from some of these other countries could be wrong and maybe they have more prisoners than they admit to or maybe we just lock up more people. Whatever is going on here, there is no denying that we do have a huge prison population? The Department of Justice released a report stating that 2,33,331 people were in prison as of the end of last year. To give us a better picture this is one for every 143 residents of the U.S.. In 1980 the prison population was only one third of what it is today. Last year was the biggest increase in prisoners in three years.
Many states have had tremendous increases in their corrections budgets. These percentage increases were much greater than the percentage increases for education, sometimes four or five times as much. The prison system is a huge drain on our economy and prisoners produce no income and because of this pay no taxes. Some argue however that many never paid taxes anyway. But where does all this money go? Many prisons have cable television service, modern gyms, basketball courts and many other amenities. Indeed some prisoners have more services in prison than they ever had on the outside. Correction officials argue that they are understaffed and allowing the prisoners to have these things makes them more manageable. About half of all prisoners in state prisons are there because of violent crimes.
The mission of the prisons used to be rehabilitation but while many states claim this is still the purpose, the prisons real mission is containment. That”s right, the mission is to remove the person from society and keep him or her, away as long as possible, thus the persistent felon laws and the three strike laws. This is not a criticism of these laws, just a commentary on what is really happening.
Some states, while pushing to save money, have released many patients from mental institutions These states have either opted for voluntary programs or even no programs. The amount of patient beds in these institutions have been severally reduced. Where have these mental patients gone? Many of them have landed up in the prison system, further straining its resources and increasing its budget. Not only is this unfair to former mental patients but it is a false economy because these people still have to be paid for. An estimate of the mentally ill in prisons is somewhere around 300,000 people.
A disturbing trend is now taking place. The Prison System now cites statistics showing that the amount of prisons built to house females has increased to 25 and the female prison population is 7,000 or seven percent of the federal prison population.
There are many sick prisoners, some have hepatitis C, tuberculosis and aids, to mention a few diseases. When they are eventually released they bring these diseases back to their communities. There are also high rates of gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia. Percentage wise, more women entered prison with sexually transmitted diseases than men. The percentages being 1 in 9 for men and women had 3 in 22. Thus prison is not only a place to retain people, but it becomes a sort of hospital where expensive medical care is given.
In the year 2000 the cost to house a prisoner ranged from $201.00 per day in New York to $35.00 in Lake County, Ind.. Only the larger systems were considered for statistics. The average cost was $56.30 per day which comes to $20549.50 per year. New York”s tab is a whopping $73,365.00 per year, per prisoner.
There has to be some solution to this problem. We can not support a system with a growth rate of the U.S. prison system. This system is threatening to destroy many of our social programs which have already weakened. Lets hope that the problem is solved in the not too distant future, or the next thing we may see are the old people going to prison just to get the services they need.
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