Dysfunctional Criminal Justice System Essay

DYSFUNCTIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Racial bias as well as the improper funding have contributed to the mass incarceration issue our country currently faces; leaving prisoners with no help of rehabilitation and our generation with a dysfunctional criminal justice system. Our Criminal Justice system is far from perfect, with a long list of problems our system has these topics are at the top of the list and with hopes of changes so our country can have a turn to the undermined criminal system we have.
One serious problem contributing to the dysfunctional criminal justice system we have is the fact that there are people who are racially bias in all sectors of the system. In the article “Ferguson Police Tainted by Bias, Justice Department Says”

Not only does our country hold the highest incarceration population but according to the article “The Real Answer to Mass Incarceration” by Gilad Edelman he quotes the President saying “our prison population of 2.2 million has more than quadrupled since 1980, even though crime has been declining for two decades; the U.S has five per cent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of its prisoners; blacks and Latinos represent about thirty per cent of the nation’s population but almost sixty per cent of its prisoners,”(page 3) its pretty clear we surpass every other country; leaving a serious issue in our hands. The author also quotes Obama when he stated “Over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before,” the President said. “And that is the real reason our prison population is so high”(page 4). After declaring the war on drugs a higher sentence was given to those prosecuted with drug offenses, however in consequence we now have a much higher incarceration percentage then ever before and a large portion of them are non

In the article “Rehabilitation programs can cut prisons cost, report says” by The Associated Press they state “Of the roughly $43,000 California spends annually to house each of its prison inmates, just 5 percent goes toward rehabilitation programs,” followed by “New programs and policies for inmates and ex-cons could eliminate the need for as many as 48,000 prison beds, the report said. The experts who developed the study estimated that could save California taxpayers $561 million to $684 million per year – about 5 percent of the total amount proposed for next year 's corrections budget”(page 1). If we can come up with better methods of helping prisoners working on there problems and helping them get there life on track we can not only help decrease the population of inmates but allow resources to go towards more beneficial causes. For example in the article “The Radical Humaneness of Norway’s Halden Prison” by Jessica Benko she compares how different the prison system is to ours when she say’s “Better out than in” is an unofficial motto of the Norwegian Correctional Service, which makes a reintegration guarantee to all released inmates. It works with other government agencies to secure a home, a job and access to a supportive social network for each inmate before