Criminal Justice Trends

Criminal Justice Trends
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Criminal Justice Trends
The corrections system has been a method of keeping offenders afar from the society as well as general public. Correctional facilities are designed, and a lot of more are being established, to accommodate the future criminals. This paper provides an evaluation of the past, present, and future trends of the Corrections system. A comprehensive discussion of the managerial and budgetary impact that the future trends would have on the corrections system, courts and law enforcement is provided.
In recent years, amongst the forces which have affected corrections in the United States, privatization and accreditation have been amongst the most prominent. The future of corrections in the United States would be affected by everything from the current public opinion and national economy to aging of prison populations and drug-related crime. The trends which would continue impacting corrections in America include intermediate sentencing alternatives, more pragmatic treatment, restorative justice, unit management/direct supervision strategies, and regionalization of jails (Stinchomb, 2005).
Until the late eighteenth century, correctional facilities were utilized largely for the imprisonment of debtors who failed to meet their obligations. They were also used to imprison the accused persons who were waiting to be tried, as well as convicts who were waiting for their banishment or death to be enforced (Ikilo, 2013). Afterward, incarceration came to be accepted as a way that can be used to punish criminals who were convicted. In the early American prisons, inmates were actually kept in isolation. During the nineteenth century, prisoners were allowed to work together, albeit only in quietness. Prison reformers, at the ending of the nineteenth century, effectively advocate backed the segregation of inmates by sex, age, as well as sort of crime done; intermediate sentencing; parole; rewards for good behavior; and vocational training. During the late twentieth century, inmate populations started to increase substantially as arrests for violent offenses as well as for possession of small quantities of illicit drugs rose (Ikilo, 2013). The correction system largely involves the government given that Federal and State governments actually have the biggest investment in this industry to date; together with private companies that run a lot of America’s jails.
The construction of new jails in recent years throughout the United States has actually skyrocketed. For over 100 years, San Quentin and Folsom were California’s only maximum security prisons. From ‘84 to ’94 however, California constructed 8 new Level 4 – maximum security – penitentiaries (Ikilo, 2013). As the state’s prison population started to rise in the early 1980s, Folsom prison became severely overcrowded; the New Folsom, California State Prison at Sacramento, is just less than ¼ a mile from the old penitentiary and it houses roughly 3,000 maximum-security prisoners. The New Folsom jail was dangerously overcrowded even prior to its completion in 1987. Presently, California has the largest prison system in the western developed world, holding more prisoners than do Japan, Germany, Britain, Holland, France, and Singapore put together (Ikilo, 2013).
At present, America has more than 2.3 million persons incarcerated and the country has incarcerated more individuals than any other nation worldwide. The large rise in the country’s prison population could be explained largely to the sentences given to individuals who have done non-violent crimes. Offenses that in other nations would typically result in drug treatment, fines, or community service – or would not even be seen as crimes in any way – in America now results in a prison term, which is certainly the most common type of punishment (Stinchcomb, 2005).
Sentencing policies of the era of War on Drugs led to significant increase in imprisonment for drug crimes. Since its official commencement in ’82, the number of Americans imprisoned for drug crimes had risen from 41,000 in ’80 to 500,000 in the year 2011 (The Sentencing Project, 2013). Moreover, harsh sentencing laws for instance mandatory minimums keep drug criminals in prison for longer times: in ’86, released drug criminals had spend an average of 22 months behind bars in Federal penitentiaries. By the year 2004, drug criminals were expected to spend 62 months in Federal prisons, which is about 3 times that length (The Sentencing Project, 2013). At the federal level, inmates imprisoned on a drug offense comprise 50% of the inmate population. At the state level, conversely, the number of drug convicts has risen 11-fold since the year 1980 and nearly all of these persons are not really high-level actors in the drug trade and the majority of them do not have prior criminal record for a violent crime (The Sentencing Project, 2013).
In America, prison is a major investment establishment. Besides being a set of interest institutions and groups, the prison-industrial complex is also a state of mind. The allure of big money corrupts America’s criminal-justice system and replaces the ideas of public service with a drive for greater profits. The inner working of the prison-industrial complex, according to Erickson (2013), can actually be seen in the New York State wherein the prison boom began and transformed the entire region’s economy; in Tennessee and Texas wherein private firms have thrived; as well as in California wherein the correctional trends of the last 30 years have converged and reached extremes.
The prison population in America’s U.S...