Overcrowding in Prisons

Subject: Overcrowding in Prisons

Being that I’m a criminal justice major I always have to stay up to date with new policies and procedures. When I was told about this paper I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about. I knew it was going to have to be something somewhat interesting or else I wouldn’t be able to write two pages on it. Yesterday I was going through some newspapers and this article caught my eye. David Crary from the Associated Press wrote an article entitled “Report: 1 in every 100 Americans behind bars.” I like how he stated that title because it helps you realize exactly how many people we are talking about here. I argue that this article primarily concerns the first three steps of the Public Policy Process: problem recognition, agenda setting, and policy formation & adoption.

Let’s start off with problem recognition and how this article shows examples of it. This article shows plenty of statistics trying to make the reader more aware of the problem at hand. I believe that problem recognition is one of the, if not the most important step of the Public Policy Process, because after all you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it exists. “…the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier” This statement simply shows the amount of money being used towards the prisons because of all the inmates. With the title being as blatantly obvious as it is and the amount of money showed being used; it is obvious that we do have an overcrowding problem. Another statement said in the article that helps you understand just how much money is being used is when they compare it to other state spending. “The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending…” Makes you wonder what’s more important, your children’s education or paying for someone to go to prison for twenty five years because of a minor violation of parole. The article also shows how we are the worlds worst in the amounts of people in our prisons. “Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.” Wow, that number is just shocking no matter how many times I read it. Can you imagine that our prisons have more people in them then any other country in the world? China, Russia, and England have less people in their prisons then we do. It’s the little things that are killing us people. Someone shouldn’t be in prison for twenty years on a violation of parole. His spot should be used by someone who has murdered or at least a bigger threat to the American community.

The next step in the Public Policy Process is agenda setting. The main parts of agenda setting are public discussion and official recognition. They really don’t go into great detail on this step