Corrections in America Today

The world of corrections in America has been traced back to European roots and has transformed both into a commercial business and a tool to punish the accused law breakers. Under United States federal law it is mandated that each state create and manage there own criminal justice systems. Some states have limited resources and small prisons which may negatively impact the state. Other states have a huge budget in managing their correctional system with thousands of officers and staff as well as multimillion dollar facilities.

The State of California probably has the most expensive jail and prison systems in the United States. The state of California operates thirty-three prison units and has over 300,000 inmates under its control with a budget of 10 billion dollars with over 63,000 employees. Clearly anyone can see that the California Department of Corrections is a wide scale operation that impacts the states budget dramatically.

A smaller state like Georgia operates with a budget of nine hundred million and now has been recently awarded a budget of just over a billion. Today, the Georgia department of corrections is undergoing a major transformation in which is closing facilities, leasing them to private corrections corporations and is improving inmate health.

Corrections in America continually changes due to the constant change in population. If every accused person was imprisoned then there would be a dramatic overflowing population and downfall in the states government budget. Therefore, some states and the United States government sometimes outsource their offenders to privatized agencies.

Since the 1980s we have seen an increase in private correctional management that has in most cases saved us money but has created other problems. Some people insist that the privatized region of the correctional industry is taking funds from government to get rich quick. If we take a look at what it costs for just one prisoner to live on a daily basis you will notice that it costs taxpayers an average of $130 daily, that is just a little over $47,000 a year for just one person. Some of the privatized correctional company's include the Geo Group, Inc.; Corrections Corporation of America and Civigenics Inc. Since the 1980s it has been an ongoing debate as to whether the government should allow corporations run correctional facilities with contracts. I believe that the government saw an opportunity to give the dirty job to someone else and therefore, made provisions in order to create more business with more controversy.

References

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. (n.d.). Facts and Figures. Retrieved from

http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/

GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. (n.d.). FY2008 Annual Report. Retrieved from

http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/