War on Drugs and Prison Overcrowding Analysis

War on Drugs and Prison Overcrowding Analysis

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War on Drugs and Prison Overcrowding Analysis

The major blame leading to the overcrowding prisons is mainly on drugs. The percentage of prisoners has risen because of drug offenses. The war on the drugs has now become the main challenge to many states whereby the prison population has greatly increased and all the correctional institutions. The policies implemented to fight drug abuse were rejected by many individuals whereby some made use of the policies. Harris (2009) argued that some of the individuals agreed with the prevention and control Act which was implemented to mitigate the war on drugs and reduce the overcrowding prisons. This disagreement on the implemented policy also led to swelling up of the prisons. There are other various ways of mitigating war on drugs and reducing our overcrowding prisons. The judges and the security officers should work hand in hand with the community to create effective solutions of the overcrowding prisons.

According to Bullington (2006) it is of great importance to give strong support to the community based policies which are out to fight drug abuse within the society. The community is the major contributor to the drug offenses and if their efforts are supported to fight these crimes, there would be much change not only to the prison but also to our nation. It is also important to work hand in hand with the community to ensure that fewer people are being sent to the prisons due to the drug crimes. Another way of reducing overcrowding in prisons is through giving the judges greater discretions over the issue of sentencing. The judge is not supposed to sentence some of the culprits into the prisons. Sometimes they should deviate from the law concerning the criminal case committed. If the victim has committed a crime that is not more violent or the nonviolent crime on drug abuse, then it means that the criminal records are clean and she or he does not deserve to be prisoned (Tkachuk & Walmsley, 2010).

In conclusion, the third solution on the overcrowding prisons is that there is need to relax the truth concerning the sentencing laws. Today the law states that, those people in prisons should serve 85% of their time of imprisonment according to the crime committed. It is therefore important for the judges to lower the truth in sentencing whereby it should be reduced to about 70% in order to reduce the number of prisoners from 600persons per 100,000 to 300 persons per 100,000. This will reduce the number of people in prisons by far. It is also important to give time like one year to the prisoners to participate in the rehabilitation programs. This will reduce the number of victims in the prison by giving them chance to do their best in rehabilitation programs which is of more help to them. Those federal graduates should be given full year of their sentence so that they can take part in rehabilitation programs. Those programs should also be expanded in order to accommodate these graduates (Tkachuk & Walmsley, 2010).

References

Bullington, B. (2006). War and peace: Drug policy in the United States and the Netherlands. Crime, Law and Social Change, 22(3), 213-238.

Harris Jr, C. M. (2009). Prison Overcrowding-The Time for Policy Change Has Come. Fla. St. UL Rev., 18, 489.

Tkachuk, B., & Walmsley, R. (2010). World prison population: facts, trends and solutions. European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations.