The Current Overpopulation Ofu.s Prisons - 2361 Words

With this being an important year for the 2016 Presidential Candidate elections, positions on certain topics can be the deciding vote for many Americans. Hot topics such as gay rights, immigration reform, and free education are dominating the debates and conversations of these politicians. However, there is one societal issue that is not being addressed enough; the current overpopulation of U.S prisons. Although this may seem like a topic that does not impact the country at large, with prisons overcrowded by almost 40 percent (Hunt, 2011), sentencing reform makes fiscal and humanitarian sense. Overpopulation The United States is a country of inmates. With over 2.3 million Americans behind bars, it equates to almost one in every 100 Americans (Hunt, 2011). The United States makes up a little more than four percent of the world’s population. However, America has more inmates than the thirty five leading European countries combined. In 2013, the U.S. admitted 9,000 more sentenced prisoners than they released that year. (Carson, 2014). The U.S prison population has more than doubled over the last fifteen years, causing an extreme overpopulation and financial burden without any immediate solutions. When determining the cause of this increase in inmates over the years, Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University states that â€Å"We’ve had a race to incarcerate that has been driven by politics, racially coded, get-tough appeals† (Hunt, 2011). A study that collected