Every day, we see pages of criminal reports on the news, most of them being serious punishment deserving. As we know the do get their punishment, in prison. But even though making reports of these criminals is easy, it is not going to be as easy to find a prison cell for them.
Think about it, the prisons are gaining more and more prisoners every day drastically more than they let go and they have to look for other prisons to transfer excess prisoners. That means more crimes are being committed than expected. But why so? Why crime is committed so much? What can we do about the lack of space? Is there anything more we can do other than just building new prisons?
As I said, we can just build more prisons and it would just fix the problem easily, right? On the paper, yes it will. Just always have a spare building and cells will not be a problem. That statement may be correct but the core issue will remain. Building more prisons is just ignoring the fact that crime rate is so much higher that it is expected to be. Nothing is done about educating the hardened prisoners and change their minds in crime. I would recommend a system like Switzerland’s which treat their prisoners as people and educating them, which helps them find their place in society, lowering the crime rate, thus less crowd in prisons.
It is reported that 2-10% of cases of imprisonment in America are falsely made. It may not look significant but it makes a difference. The causes of these false cases may vary: laws may not be specific enough for the case, there may be not be enough evidence but a conclusion made etc. The percentage will probably never be 0 but we can try to lower it at best of our efforts. Updating the laws often and implementing laws to fit into the problems that causes false imprisonment.
Crowding in prisons is a dark problem which should be taken seriously and taken care of from the core, not by building more prisons.