The United States has less than five percent of the world's population, but it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. Around twenty percent of the new commitments each year are parole violators and a large majority are non-violent offenders. According to Adam Liptak in his article “U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs that of Other Nations,” “The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London.” Americans are often locked up for things such as using drugs or writing a bad check. Sending someone to prison should be our last resort because it’s expensive and can increase risk for future criminal behavior. Yet, even as the crime rates decrease, prisons are still overcrowded. The reason for this, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council in the article “Prison Overcrowding,” is: During the late 1980s and early 1990s, state and local governments passed tough crime legislation. For example, California passed the “three strikes and you’re out” law which called for mandatory sentencing of repeat offenders, and New York adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small. Policy such as this led to reduced crime rates, but increased populations in jails and prisons. While mandatory sentencing laws are being passed, laws criminalizing an increasing number of behaviors are also being passed. The result is that, not only are judges forced to send people to prison in cases where it might not be necessary, but they are forced to do so because there are more activities which come with mandatory sentences than ever before. overcrowding in California was so bad in California that the Supreme Court declared it to be cruel and unusual