[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Corrections
There can be plenty of reasons why the media spotlight should shine steadily on corrections. Even if much of the public does not care about prisons or inmates, their impact on communities, public safety and government spending is enormous. The criminal justice system has reshaped state budgets, urban neighborhoods and popular culture. During the 1980s and 1990s, prison culture became the norm on some blocks, right down to inmate-style baggy, belt-less pants. Prison vernacular has found its way onto the streets and into the rhymes of hip-hop. My 32-year-old brother-in-law, who served seven years in prison for drug dealing, once told me that he did not know any young man from his eastside Detroit neighborhood who had not wound up in prison, jail or on probation.
In Michigan, the number of inmates has risen from below 9,000 in the mid-1970s to nearly 50,000 today. The state faces a $375 million budget shortfall. At a time when the government does not have enough money to pay for roads or schools, the prison budget eats up $1.8 billion a year, nearly 20 percent of the state's general fund. Michigan spends about as much on prisons as it does on higher education. During the past 30 years, fueled by tough-on-crime politicians, the nation's prison population has more than quadrupled to surpass 2 million. State and federal prisons constitute a $31 billion a year growth industry, a grim reminder of the nation's failure to solve some of its deepest social problems.
Here are some more sobering statistics: The United States reports the world's highest incarceration rate. One in 14 black children, or 1.5 million, has a parent in prison. Hundreds of thousands of offenders are released into their communities every year, many of them ill-prepared for life on the outside.....
