All prisons in the United States are overcrowded and understaffed. There is little emphasizes placed on rehabilitation. The jail and prison increase happen to be storage sitting room for criminals. Many who are repeat offenders or drug addicts? The way the criminals are let out of jail and allowed back into the general public can lead to many of them habitual to a life of crime and therefore, becoming an individual of the many repeat offenders. In many cases the offender is released without any directions.
One of the main reasons that prisons have become overcrowded is that crime control strategies and legislative changes have fought and won to have longer sentences. These approaches have incarcerated people for longer periods of time with almost no chance or possibility for early release. The exact cost is not associated with the overcrowding; we can look at present costs incurred in prison and anticipate their increase as the system takes on more and additional inmates. When looking at the cost of overcrowding, we not only have to look at the cost to taxpayers per inmate but also construction cost needed to build the new prisons to relieve the overcrowding. The operating cost for a prison over its life span cost about fifteen to twenty times the original construction cost. Overcrowding causes serious deprivation in the quality of life for everyone in a correctional institution. Overcrowding also causes litigation's that force the federal and state prisons to build new facilities to relieve overcrowding.
Rehabilitation has been around for many years and throughout those years the chance to study models good and bad have given us much research to work with in knowing which rehabilitation models work and which do not. Rehabilitation programs should change or modify the offender or help them to modify themselves, as well as changing or modifying life