America’s Prison Population

[Thunderbird]

According to a report by the Public Safety Performance Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America’s Prison Population 2007-2011, by 2011 one in every 178 U.S. residents will live in prison. By 2011, America will have more than 1.7 million men and women in prison, an increase of more than 192,000 from 2006. That increase could cost taxpayers as much as $27.5 billion over the next five years beyond what they currently spend on prisons.

As federal and state prisons release record numbers of ex-offenders each year, the communities into which these prisoners are released are unprepared to sustain the economic and social burden of this huge reentry population. As a consequence, reentering ex-offenders lack the support needed to reintegrate back into the community as productive law abiding citizens.

Public awareness and support are of key importance in finding solutions to this dual problem of growing prison populations and recidivism, public safety being the ultimate goal. In the last decade or so, the solution to the high crime rate has been stiffer sentencing and therefore has created an increase not only in prison populations, but a larger ex-offender population coming out of prison back into the community.

Men and woman ex-offenders returning to our community may find it very difficult to reintegrate as productive citizens. Relationships prior to incarceration may have been lost during their time away. Job skills development, people skills, and educational opportunities may atrophy, or be put on hold while inside.

Private sector and government policies may also result in disenfranchising the ex-offender from basic services, such as employment, educational benefits, public housing and government food programs. While the goal is pubic safety, the end result is a cyclical regeneration of large populations of individuals that find themselves disconnected and disoriented.

 

By focusing public policy only on the first half of the process; funneling of the offender into prisons though law enforcement and the courts, and not considering the second part; successful reentry into the community, the problems are or not only put on hold, but are magnified.