A New Sentencing Reform For The United States - 1190 Words

Sentencing Reform America holds 16.3 trillion dollars in debt and the debt will continue to increase for the next twenty years. Arizona is not far behind with the accumulating debt of 42.7 billion dollars. Arizona crimes rates has increased in the last decade and the state now has over 42,000 inmates being provided food and cells at the taxpayers’ expense. To accommodate the increase of prisoners, Arizona has the increase the spending on the prison system will ignoring methods that will cut state’s expense and the increasing crime rate. In order to ensure public safety and to replenish exhausted expanses, Arizona Legislatures should adopt a new sentencing reform that limits the cost of prisons while protecting the general†¦show more content†¦Despite the large amount of criminals in prison, the crimes: murder, rape, and others has only â€Å"accounted for 10.6 percent of the total Crime Index† (Access Integrity Unit). The vast majority of criminals locke d up are held on drug addiction or petty theft charges and not more serious offenses such as murder or assault. To put it simply, the cells that were built with taxpayers’ dollars holds 89.4 percent of criminals that are of no real threat to society. While the jail cells continue to fill up with occupants that has no business being behind bars, the general public will not feel any safer until new laws are passed to insure lesser offenders can get the help they so desperately need. Prison reform must be implicated for the general public to feel safe once again. Society has trained us from a very young age to believe that that anyone who committed a crime belongs in jail despite â€Å"recent studies find no correlation between incarceration and low crime rates† (Machelor). There has actually been more studies that has suggest children who are raised in homes where the parents has spent most of their lives in jails are five times more likely to grow up to commit similar crimes of their parents. This is especially true in poverty stricken areas where children will resort to petty crimes like their parents. Government officials should consider crimes that correlate to economic and social disadvantages in society and â€Å"create