Word: prisoners
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...NUMBER OF AMERICANS behind bars has doubled in the last decade. These are currently 663,000 people incarcerated in the nation's prison and the count is growing fast. Many prisons are grossly overcrowded with several inmates occupying cells designed for one or two people. More prisons are being built, but the cost is staggering--100 are currently under construction at a projected total cost of $3.5 billion. Operating prisons is also extremely expensive, ranging from $13,000 to as much as $10,000 a year for each inmate...
...removing dangerous individuals from circulation. This argument is sound, so long as we only look up people convicted of violent crimes whose individual cases indicate that they can not be rehabilitated or controlled through halfway houses, probation or other less severe measures. Yet in many places where the prison problem is worst, there has been stiff resistance to laws which would incarcerate only violent criminals. In staunchly liberal Washington, D.C., where inmate overcrowding has been a notorious problem for years, public pressure recently forced the city to abandon plans to stop locking up non-violent criminals in favor of building...
...MOST FRIGHTENING proposal yet from those who advocate building more prisons is to contract eat their operation to private prison corporations. What better way to fuel the line and cry for draconian law and order than to give the business community a financial stake in increasing the number of prisoners? Although Texas and New Mexico have already passed legislation authorizing private prisons, no states are actually using them. However, private companies do operate alien detention centers (primarily for Haitians) for the federal government, and there have already been at least two instances of neglect and violence against prisoners that probably...
...Private prison companies charge by the inmate. They make a profit by spending less money per inmate than the state would in a state run institution. They neither train their workers as well nor pay them as well as the state. They have an inventive to do things more cheaply. The logic of profitability does not provide a basis for a just corrections system...
Through there will certainly be some criminals who must be put behind bars, even some violent criminals might safely be dealt with through measures short of imprisonment, or at least through a combination of shorter prison sentences and other post-release measures. Finally, for those now imprison and those whose crimes are so serious that they require incarceration, "good time" laws can shorten the duration of prison sentences and encourage rehabilitation. Such laws provide early release on parole for good behavior in prison with the possibility of reimprisonment for violation of the terms of parole. They are by no means...