Yanbin Zhang
Sociology 2600
Reaction Paper 3
6/26/2013
One thing I Learned in Soc 2600
Through this course, I have grasped a lot of knowledge that I have never known before. There is one thing I learned in Soc2600 is the overcrowding in prisons. The population of prisoners is increasingly high in the United States, thus it results in an overcrowding problem, which needs to be solved due to becoming an urgent priority in this country. Due to offenders being locked up at a high rate and the United States spending much money, we should not deal with offenders by building more prisons or locking them more time. So far, the overcrowding in prison has led to some other problems such as the increase rate of violence between the prisoners and the officers, and among the prisoners themselves. I think punishment should be swift, certain, and moderate. The best way we solve the overcrowding problem is to expand the rehabilitation program to displace incarceration. For expanding the rehabilitation program, we are not supposed to incarcerate those prisoners who are not felon, because it may reduce the recidivism rate. We can release the some prisoners who are convicted as misdemeanor at their first time. If we give them a second time, they may continue a life without crime. To sum up, we must change something to our correction system, otherwise the overcrowding problem will be getting worse. It not only wastes the space of prisons but raise the violence rate in the prison, and also it will waste more money of taxpayers to pay the costs of incarcerating inmates.