Prison Overcrowding

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also plagues our communities as local and federal governments are left to deal with heavy financial burden to keep the prison systems running. In California the prison system is simply not designed to house the inmates it currently has, which is can be attributed to the “state’s sentencing laws, parole system, and rehabilitation programs or lack thereof” (Muradyan, 2008).

With the “nation’s largest and world’s third largest prison system”, California faces one of the toughest battles as overcrowding has reached “unprecedented levels.” California’s prison system incarcerates approximately 175,000 men and women in 33 prisons that were designed to hold roughly half that amount (Muradyan, 2008). With every California prison operating at nearly “200 percent capacity,” resources are scarce among inmates. When Avenal State Prison “opened in 1987, it was designed for 2,920 inmates, and in 2007 it housed 7,525” (Muradyan, 2008). Overcrowding in California prisons is so severe that about ...

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with society upon completing their sentences, but without them inmates are left with little choice but to return to their criminal activities (Specter, 2010). The scarcity of resources leads to inmates’ feelings of frustration over being limited or denied a resource, as well as the fact that conflict and competition over the resources leads to aggression and violence (Spector, 2010). As these inmates are released early to relieve overcrowding, the effects of being in that environment stay with them; they’re reintegrated in to society without the programs they were supposed to have received, and are now more aggressive.

Recidivism rates among those released early from state and ...

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