The United States of America is the cradle of democracy, human rights, freedom, justice and equality. The oldest democracy in the world. On the other hand, it is also a country of law and order and the most policed nation under the sun in this 21st century. America's police organisation is very localized, extensive in its operations and coverage networks. The police organizations are formed at all levels and they cover varied jurisdiction areas, such as the city police, the campus police, the county police, the state troopers and the Federal Police unit known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Today, America has 310 million persons which makes it the fourth largest country in the world in terms of population and a prison population close to 2.3 million inmates, the largest in the whole world. According to the online encyclopedia the Wikipedia "American prisons and jails held 2,297,400 inmates in 2009. Approximately one in every 18 men in the United States is behind bars or being monitored. A significantly greater percentage of the American population is in some form of correctional control even though crime rates have declined by about 25 percent from 1988-2008. 70% of prisoners in the United States are non-whites".
The prisons' networks and facilities are so extensive, and are under the different jurisdictions and authorities. Inmates are kept in juvenile facilities if they are teenagers, jail in Indian country serving the Indian reservations, military facilities for the members of the United States Armed Forces, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE facilities for immigrants that violate the United States immigration laws, local jails for local criminals, territorial jails that cover certain territories, state prisons for state offenders and federal prisons for federal crimes.
WHAT CAUSES THE BOOM IN THE UNITED STATES PRISONS' POPULATION?
A number of factors are primarily responsible for the high incarceration rate in America's prisons and jails:
(i) High imprisonment of persons that commit non-violent crimes in our society.
(ii) Poor rehabilitation facilities in our prisons. The freed prisoners after serving their jail time are unable to integrate fully into our society, and many of them may then repeat their previous crimes and be back to the prison systems again, periodically or on a lifetime basis.
(iii) "Once a felon, you are a felon for life mentality" does not encourage released prisoners to feel that they have a second chance in life, or are full members of the society. They are deny certain rights and privileges, such as employment, voting rights, gun ownership and residential restrictions for sex offenders. This negative mentality encourages freed prisoners to go back to their former crimes and be back to the prison system again.
(iv) Many high school dropouts and teenage mothers due to lack of opportunities for money making in life, employment or career advancement may consider a life of crime as the alternative way of living.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST AMERICAN TAX PAYERS TO MAINTAIN THESE PRISONERS?
According to the federal agency in charge of the collection of all the federal taxes from the American tax payers, the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), over 144 million Americans pay federal taxes in the tax year that ended in 2009. They paid a combine taxes of about $1.18 trillion. These tax payers are financially responsible for the daily maintenance of our over 2.2 million persons in American prisons and jails. According to the website http://www.trutv.com/. It costs taxpayers about $23,000 a year to house and feed each prisoner, about three times of what it cost to go to a university or a community college for one academic year of study.
AMERICAN PRISONERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
It is not likely that the prison population in the United States will ever go down in the nearest future. According to the yearly publication from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), over 3.8 million arrests were made for violent crimes (murder, man slaughter, rape, robbery and assault), property crimes (burglary, theft and arson) and non-violent crimes alone in 2009. The already overburdened American taxpayers will continue to carry these huge financial responsibilities for a long time to come.
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