Confidential Informants And Criminal Investigations

This paper discusses three critical issues in the criminal justice system. It touches on the general issues of punishment philosophies, sentence decision making, and prison overcrowding and focused more specifically on the negative effects of each. Highlighted in this informational paper is the interrelated nature of the issues; each issue affects and is affected by the others. Data and information has been gathered from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Amnesty International, the NAACP Legal Defense

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

We can date the United States criminal justice policies all the way back to the 17th Century. Although it is nothing compared to what we have today, there have been improvements along the way. One of the major reform needed in our corrections system are the war on drugs and overcrowded prison. The history of corrections in the U.S. has been seen through four major eras known as the Penitentiary, Reformatory, Reintegration, and Retributive Era. Each era has tried to explore the best way to deal with people who have broken the law. Based on the ideas of each era, we’ll explore which reform needs to be implemented.

This quote from Dave Kelly shows many of the issues with the United State’s criminal justice system today. The prison population is increasing because prisoners are being taken in at a higher rate than they are released.

Since the beginning of time, the United States’ Criminal Justice System (CJS) has been scrutinized and will continue to be. If significant changes were to occur within the CJS it could potentially take decades. Different persons, institutions, governments, and even departments within governments have different views; it is a natural occurrence. Thus, as with any subject matter, there are always controversies that cause disruption within society. Often, the controversies stem from the lack of understanding and the historical patterns of unsupported data.

In the past four decades, there has been a staggering increase in the United States prison population at the local and state level. Currently there are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails that has added up to a 500% increase over 40 years (The sentencing project). The cause of this prison growth is a variety of laws and punitive sentencing policies that were initiated starting in the early 1970’s. Policies such as harsh drug penalties for non-violent crimes, Mandatory Minimum Maximum sentences and the Three Strikes law have all contributed to America’s current problem of mass incarceration.

The number of prisoners in United States prisons has increased and are still growing day-by-day. The Sentencing Project, an organization that fights for a fair and effective U.S. justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addresses unjust racial disparities and practices in its article “Trends in U.S. Corrections.” They write, “The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons and jails — a 500% increase over the last forty years ”(The Sentencing Project 1). According to The Sentencing Project statistics, the number of prisoners has dramatically increased in the past four decades,

The current crime and incarceration trends have declined since early 1990s, which in part is due to the current reforms that takes place within the criminal justice system, such as early release dates for drug charges and non-violent crimes (Mauer, 2011). The incarceration rates in the United States are “three to four times that of other industrialized nations,” and the punishment scale is viewed as “out of proportion to that of other industrialized nation” (Mauer, 2011).

Thesis: The United States prison system is not the best option for punishing criminals, prison reform needs to happen.

High incarceration rates in the United States are astronomical. According to Williams (2014), there are more than twenty-four million people incarcerated between the state, federal, juvenile correctional facilities, jails, military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment center and prisons in the U.S. territories. The makes the United States to have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Texas prison system has grown faster than any other state and has been reported that one out of every twenty adults were in the corrections system under one form or another (Texas Tough, n.d.). The problem is that the crime rates do not account for the [prison] rates (Hartney, 2006). Thus, from the overcrowding, there are issues with

Over the last decade the prison population in the United States has increased but the total admissions has decreased. In 2004, the national statistics for the prison population showed 1,497,100 persons to be incarcerated from Federal Institutions to State Institutions. Ten years later in 2014, the prison population increased to 1,562,525. This increase in population is not as dramatic when it comes to comparing 2004 and 2014. However, comparing 2014 to 1978 there is a tremendous increase in population, the total population in 1978 was 307, 276. From the war on drugs to the increase numbers of homicides, in 36 years we have incarcerated over one million additional people. In one year, the justice system admitted 631,

“But beginning in the 1970s, a number of political and economic factors gave rise to the prison boom, which was to bring the nation to the age of mass incarceration, which in turn would have far reaching and sometimes devastating impacts on those affected… According to the Bureau for Justice Statistics, the number of adult federal and state prison inmates increased from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 502 per 100,000 in 2009 — an increase of 261 percent.” (The Growing Problems).

Now that the dramatic rise in the U.S. prison population is clearly established, the next question is to address the reasons for this extreme increase. Three of the most common explanations for this occurrence is the passage of new federal sentencing guidelines, the enactment of numerous state “three strikes” laws, and the increased ability to pay for incarceration.

Did you know that the United States has more prisoners than any other country in the world? Well, shockingly enough, it does. “More than 1.57 million inmates sat behind bars in federal, state, and county prisons and jails around the country as of December 31, 2013” (Flatow). The major problem this causes, other than diminishing the image of the U.S., is the substantial amount money that we spend on our prisons. Every year, billions of dollars go toward our justice system and the prisons that are connected to them. “Prior to this year, the federal prison population had spiked more than 790 percent since 1980” (Flatow). Across the country, racial issues continue to be a problem as a black male is six times more likely than a white to be in prison, and a Hispanic male is 2.4 times more likely (Flatow). Racial controversy has continued to spread. As the years go by it appears that more and more crimes are linked to racism and supremacy. These crimes may consist of

The criminal justice system has been evolving since the time the system was created. The criminal justice system has helped control the crime in the United States and also attempted to help those charged to lead better lives. The government has enforced and passed legislation that drastically alters the criminal justice system and how authorities should treat those convicted. In the YouTube video, John Oliver directly hits major points and concerns in the criminal justice system. He unleashed information that most people do not want to discuss about the system and John Oliver made it an awareness to the public to realize how the system is failing those incarcerated. Throughout the paper, the topics that will be discussed includes the drug problems