State and Federal Prison Systems
Traci McGahey
CJS220
May 25, 2014
Professor Gillespie

State and Federal Prison Systems
State and Federal prisons have been evolved over the years and house inmates convicted of committing crimes and sentenced to incarceration, usually over one year. State and Federal prisons are similar in various ways with few differences. There is always some sort of conflict going on behind the scenes about changes that some feel should be implemented into the prison systems while there are others that feel other changes are more important. The prison systems are always changing and will continue to change as years go by.
State and Federal prisons serve the same purpose of housing inmates who have committed some sort of crime. Federal prisons are ran by a federal agency and house inmates convicted of violating federal laws, such as bank robbery, treason, forgery, drug trafficking, most crimes considered “white collar” crimes. State prisons are ran by a state agency and house inmates convicted of violating laws put in place by each state, for things such as burglary, grand theft, assault with a deadly weapon, homicide and other gun and sex related crimes.
The other major differences in federal and state prisons are the number of facilities that there is the security levels that there are and the amount of time that a prisoner has to serve of the sentence they were given. There are more state prisons than federal, federal facilities have higher levels of security and in federal prisons prisoners are required to serve 100% of their sentence whiles in state prisons the inmates usually only serve about 50% of their sentences.
Prison overcrowding is an issue in both federal and state prisons. There are various reasons that cause overcrowding such as: 1) crime rates fluctuate from time to time, 2) there are times that harsher penalties have