Pros And Cons Of Overcrowded Prisons

How do you decide who goes to prison and who doesn’t?You can only have so many people in a prison at once, so you have to decide who goes in and who stays out. Overcrowded prisons can be a safety hazard to the prisoners and also it costs taxpayers to keep them there. there are two groups of people. Let’s imagine this scenario: One group of 20 people, Group A is going to trial for possession of an illicit substance. Another group, Group B also has 20 people going to trial except this time for murder. All of these 40 people broke the law, so they should all be held accountable for their actions. You could simply try to put them all away in prison except for the fact that the prison only holds 30 people at once. You can go about this anyway
There is the general crime, such as stealing. That could be the end of it, but it is not, there are different laws for each type of stealing. For example there is embezzlement, which would be when someone steals money from a company, then there is robbery. There is also theft auto, kidnapping so many different kinds of stealing. Of course for each one there is a different sentencing because one is not as severe as the other, it would be unfair to just give everyone the same sentencing for the same general crime. This is how you should think of drug sentencing, there is the general crime of using/distributing drugs but once again there are the groups of crimes under the general crime. There is a difference between drug using, drug trafficking, drug dealing, selling/using drug paraphernalia. While all are drug crimes, they differ in severity so it would be unfair to give each crime the same jail time. Drugs are very dangerous substances and they destroy lives so they should not be taken lightly. But putting someone in jail for 10 years because they smoked marijuana, is unconstitutional. If no one was hurt or in danger then jail shouldn’t even be an option. Probation is best, especially for juveniles, even though they made a bad decision and need to learn for their mistakes, they still have to get their education. The education programs in Juvenile Detention may not be good enough and prepare them for when
More and more people are being incarcerated with less people being released and it is costing everybody. It is costing taxpayers to pay for prison upkeep, keeping the prisoners in the prison and the more money going to the prisons the less money going towards other important things such as education and pensions for retiring workers. Just one prisoner alone costs between $20,000 and $40,000 to keep in prison for just one year. If that is just one year alone imagine cost for the minimum 20 year sentences people have to serve for drug related crimes. There are way too many overcrowded prisons in the United States alone, which is not helping anybody. The “War on Drugs” needs to be approached in a different way, instead of throwing everyone in jail for everything we need to take a smarter more logical, more efficient approach to it. Recently in Ireland, they have decriminalized small amounts of heroin, cocaine and marijuana. The approach they take is to treat these addicts as they are, addicts instead of throwing them in jail and hoping the drugs stop circulating. They are planning to set up special rehab centers for the addicts to go so that they can get the rehab they need. Or if they aren’t ready to stop using drugs they have special rooms where they can do the drugs with medical personnel nearby to monitor them. This seems as though is it counteractive does it not? Although if you think about it, it is the