"Tough On Crime"

An article by Matt Ferner, of Huffpost Politics, talks about how our nation’s unfair punishment system has finally been brought to notice. The article provides a recent poll that was released this past week. The results of the poll pronounced an overwhelming number of Americans wanting to reform our federal justice system. Not only did the voters agree on the need to change our court system; but also, the majority of the voters believe that far too many drug offenders are locked up in our federal prisons. In fact, statics shows that over half of the population in federal prisons are drug offenders, and 70% of those inmates in local jails are sentenced for way too long. Roughly, 2.3 million people are behind bars nationwide, making the U.S the “world’s leading jailer”. Currently, the over populated prisons is costing the U.S. an awful lot of money: over $80 billion a year. Is there a solution that will reduce these numbers? Of course. According to the same poll, majority of those voters favored to allow people to shorten their sentences by participating in programs like drug treatment and job-training classes. These ideas can help lower such high figures that our prisons unfortunately holds.

I strongly believe that this article is a very important read for everyone. It is shocking to see such high numbers of innocent people being locked up, and for the nation that I live in holds the title: world’s leading jailer!