Tyler Whitfield

ENGL 2010-035
4/21/15
Pear Review Final Draft

With the high cost of keeping people in prison there has to be another way to try and help
these people get over their problems. It costs anywhere from 21,000 to 33,000 dollars a year to
keep a person in prison. When more than 50 percent of all prisoners being held in the USA being
non violent offenders it shows that we need a change in our system. Non violent crimes could be
anything that doesnt included a victim to the crime, such as drug use or gambling. The USA
has only 5 percent of the worlds population but holds 25 percent of all its prisoners. [1] That
alone shows that the sentencing part of our justice system is lacking something very important
since the main punishment is imprisonment and that doesnt help anyone out.
I feel that the current system seems to hurt a lot more people then it helps. It hurts the tax
payers by having them front the bill for all these people to be imprisoned. It hurts the actual
prisoner since he is taken away from his family and his job. The group that gets hurt the most is
the offenders family. Not only do they lose a family member but they lose a source of income.
With so many different people getting hurt by these sentencing laws, I feel that its time to look
for alternative methods.
Prison reform has a lot of different types of people on its side, one of them being
Attorney General Eric Holder. He has a couple different ideas on how to reduce prison

population and to give these non violent offenders different options to repay their debts to society
instead of locking them in a cell for years with no chance of getting rehabilitated. He wants to
reduce sentences in most drug cases. He seeks to reset the sentencing policies for federal judges,
and reduce sentences for such crimes by an average of nearly a year. Thieves, fraud artists and
tax evaders might well be released earlier, subject to more severe penalties if they offend again.
A Department of Justice sentencing panel is about to propose an amendment to federal guidelines
with the idea of retaining severe penalties for dangerous and violent drug traffickers while
reducing the sentencing ranges for low-level nonviolent drug offenders without connections to
gangs or large-scale drug organizations. Mr. Holder also wishes to release more elderly federal
inmates earlier and to increase the efforts to help ex-convicts re-enter society. [1]
I agree with Holder on these reform plans. Some of those plans would help out more than
just the prisoners. With a smaller number of prisoners in prison it would open up space for some
of the prisoners to reach out and get into programs that would have been full otherwise. It would
also save the money that would be spent to put that person in prison. Holder is not trying to get
rid of all punishment that is tied to these crimes; he just wants to make it so that the punishment
fits the criminal and not the crime.
Another part of the criminal justice system that gets over looked is that every prison in
America has problems with overcrowding. With the mandatory minimum sentencing in place it
makes it so that our prisons are only going to get more and more prisoners every year. Due to
these new laws, the federal prison system saw their total prisoner numbers explode. It went
from 24,000 in the 80s to about 226,000 now days. [2]

I believe the time to end mandatory minimum sentencing is now. Mandatory minimum
sentencing was created with no oversight because it forces judges to give out sentences that they
may not believe in. These laws were created to try and combat a new and growing problem at the
time. In the late 80s, crack cocaine started to become incredibly popular, to try and curb this
addiction lawmakers rolled out new laws that forced even first time offenders to spend at least 5
years in prison [1]
There are four classic functions of the corrections system; deterrence, incapacitation,
retribution, and rehabilitation. With the overcrowding of prisons it makes it impossible to
accomplish the most important parts of the correction system. When the prisoners cant get into
the programs offered it means that the prison systems either need to add more of these classes or
the justice system needs to change some laws around so that there isnt so many people in need
of these classes. The solution to rehabilitation lies not only inside prisons but also with more
effective community supervision systems using new technologies, drug tests and counseling
programs.
Rehabilitation should be the focus of every prison system since eventually they need to
release these people back into the public. If the prisoner just sat in their cell for their whole
sentence then that person will more than likely jump back into the same type of lifestyle that got
them thrown into prison in the first place. Every year between 600,000 to 700,000 prisoners are
released back onto the streets which show the importance of rehabilitation. [3]
Prison reform isnt without its opponents. Michael Howard is an English politician who
had a very tough stance against crime. He was the leader in Home Secretary from 1993-1997. All
of his programs and laws can be boiled down to two words that he once famously said during a

news conference, prison works. During his four year run as Home Secretary it saw prison
population rise and crime rates fall.
The Justice Secretary should face up to the truth that prison is an effective punishment
for two simple reasons. First, it stops convicts committing offences while they are inside. It has
been estimated that the average prisoner has committed 140 crimes before capture. Secondly,
prison can act as a deterrent to serious offenders. Convicts dislike being inside. In contrast,
feeble community punishments and the award of endless cautions only give criminals the
message that they have nothing to fear from the justice system. [4]
I had the chance recently to interview a long time corrections officer. She has been
working at the Draper prison for about 20 years. In her time there she has seen everything that
has to do with prisons. I asked her a couple questions and I was surprised by her answers. When
asked about what how we should try and fix the overcrowding population she gave a quick a
simple response. Stop putting people in prison that shouldnt be there. She goes on to say that a
majority of the prisoners she deals with everyday are just low level criminals with non-violent
pasts. I agree with her since these types of prisoners make up a large part of the prison
population.
I feel that mandatory minimum sentencing has run its course. It puts too much strain on
the prison system by putting non-violent offenders in prison for multiple years for a crime that
didnt hurt anybody. The thing to remember is that not all crimes are the same and that we should
have the punishment fit the criminal and not the crime.

Sources:

[2]:Frumin, Aliyah. "The Long, Slow Push to Prison Sentencing Reform." Msnbc.com.
NBC News Digital, 28 Apr. 2014. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
[4]: Green, David. "Prison DOES Work, Ken, and Here's the Proof." Mail Online.
Associated Newspapers, 8 Dec. 2010. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
[3]: Lehrer, Eli. "Responsible Prison Reform Publications National Affairs." Responsible
Prison Reform National Affairs. National Affairs, Summer 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
[1]: Zuckerman, Mortimer. "Get a Little Less Tough on Crime." US News. U.S.News &
World Report, 9 May 2014. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.