The resolution by the United States to increase the number of people who get incarcerated has come with abnormally high cost that has become quite difficult to manage. Compared tony other country, the number of people who get incarcerated in the United States has been on a steady increase. It has fueled the United States budget with substantial values. The cost of managing the incarceration is very high. As reported in the year 2008, more than 2.3 million American was serving prison terms while out of every 48 working age men, one was behind the bars.Precisely, the cost of correcting offenders in the United States shot up to around $75 billion in 2008, of which appreciable cost was incurred on incarceration. Owing to this menace, there are concerns on how the government can reduce the cost incurred in carrying out corrective measures against offenders. In this essay, therefore, various ways to reduce the cost incurred on incarceration are discussed especially by providing alternative ways of correcting offenders other than using the incarceration that has tremendously increased the budget and cost of correction of offenders.
Secondly, the inmates and offenders serving incarceration should be subjected to work that would be able to pay back to the society the cost that have been incurred in correction measures. The virtue of hard work for success should be the economic pillar in deciding correction measures against offenders. Exposing the offenders to hard work and then signing an abiding agreement for a sustainable economy would be central in keeping the cost of corrections at manageable terms. Besides, it should be understood that incarceration reduces the ability of the individual offenders to work. This makes them economically burdensome. The society needs to reduce the rate and number of people who get incarcerated. Incarceration leads to loss of skills and interest to engage in productive economic practice.
Moreover, incarceration causes mental torture and psychological stress among the children who have their parents incarcerated. The impact is that these children remain to be in need and become a burden to the society (Pettit, 2007). Therefore, reducing the number of incarcerations would significantly reduce the cost incurred in taking care of the children left behind.
References
Pettit, B. a. (2007). ”Status and the Stigma of Incarceration: The Labor Market Effects of Incarceration by Race, Class, and Criminal Involvement. In M. S. Shawn Bushway, In Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America (pp. 206–226.). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
