Current Trends of Penal Reform in the U.S.

Abstract

The United States’ penal system has been undergoing many changes in recentyears. These changes range from reducing prison sentences to changingrehabilitative programs for prisoners, and are based on studies and research lookingat what policies and strategies are most effective and most beneficial to society asa whole. Many of these changes have been or are being pushed due to the hugegrowth in the United States’ prison population over the past four decades, whichhas not only resulted in prison overcrowding, but has become a huge burden ontaxpayers who have to pay for each inmate being kept in prison. This epidemic ofincarceration has caused an increasing number of people in the United States toquestion the effectiveness of the current approach to imprisonment in the justicesystem, as well as many other aspects of the penal system, such as rehabilitation,education, and sentencing. In particular, there is a lot of criticism regardingmandatory sentencing for nonviolent crimes, such as drug offenses, which might bebetter addressed by assigning probation, community service, a fine, or sending theoffender into a treatment program, if necessary. After all, studies have found thathaving nonviolent offenders in prison for too long is actually more likely to makethem repeat offenders, so that the prison becomes a sort of revolving door formany of its inmates. Some states have already begun researching alternate methodsof sentencing in order to reduce prison population, and have had some measure ofsuccess, though the nation as a whole still has a long way to go. Another morein-depth method to reducing prison population is through rehabilitation, essentiallyensuring that the rate of incarceration is reduced simply by virtue of the fact that fewer offenders return to the prison, and instead re-enter society as law-abidingcitizens. The latter method is far more difficult to tackle, as each individualconvicted of a crime has a different story and different reasons for breaking thelaw, and as such, there is still a lot of room for discussion on how to improverehabilitative programs and also to make these programs more available to theinmates who need them.