Summary
Correcional Options
Prison and jail crowding and the rise of people under correctional supervision is attributed to the increase in the country's population, efficiency of law enforcement and legal systems and the implementation of mandatory sentencing laws. To avoid costly prison construction projects, several states have developed correctional options programs and policies for the cost-effective control of the growth of inmate populations.See the full content of this document
Extract
An overview.
By now we are all too familiar with the steady stream of mind-numbing statistics documenting the nation's rapidly expanding correctional system.
In the fall of 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that more than one million inmates are now incarcerated in U.S. prisons. In 1993, the most recent year that national data are available, there were 455,000 inmates in jails, 94,000 youths in juvenile facilities, 2.8 million probationers and 672,000 parolees. The United States now has approximately 5 million men, women and children under some form of correctional supervision - at an annual cost of more than $85 billion. By comparison, 1.9 million people were under correctional supervision in 1980. What has caused these massive increases? During the past decade, the U.S. population grew 13 percent, while crime rates increased only 8 percent. Although there has been some increase in arrests - arrests for serious crimes (murder, manslaughter, robbery, assault, kidnapping, rape, burglary and theft) increased 23 percent from 1980 to 1992 - other developments have fueled the rise in correctional populations. The "front end" of the criminal justi...See the full content of this document
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