Prison Overcrowding
Nowadays, overcrowding in prisons has become a serious concern in the United States, especially in California where there is not enough space for the increasing inmate population. And according to the most recent statistics from Californians Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the state gives a bigger budget to prisons than any other state. With annual spending of about nine billion dollars and forty-five thousand dollars per inmate, California obviously pumps more money on prisons than higher education.
On average, murderers and violent criminals are jailed from four years up to twenty-five years. The more time they serve in Jail, the more money the state has to spend. Hence, in order to solve the prison overcrowding problem and save a lot of money, some solutions have been executed such as increasing prison capacity, restitution, or house arrest, but they have not worked so far. There is a better way that may work. That is setting up battle arenas in prisons and authorizing inmates to beat each other to death. The prize for the survivor is the immediate freedom and a certain sum of money.
Thereby, we not only avoid prison overcrowding, but also cut prison budgets. It seems like an outrageous idea, but at least it would work because inmates have nothing to lose; thus, they are highly motivated to fight for their freedom. After all, there are three reasons why this cruel solution should be implemented. Firstly, by allowing prisoners to kill each other, every prisoner dies, it immediately decreases forty-five thousand dollars of the prison annual budget. If we had lessened the number of prisoners, we could have stopped deeding them and building new Jails.
Through a simple computation, we will get almost five million dollars if one thousand criminals die per year. We could use the saved money to build more supportive housing for people in need, support returning veterans, open more public transportation, and spend more money on subsidies for higher education. Secondly, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice, there is seventy percent of felony defendants repeating their prior crimes. For this reason, inmates, who can’t survive in their fight, have no more Hansen to do their crimes again. Innocent people would be safer.
The losses of family members caused by crimes would be reduced. Thirdly, prisons now look like a battlefield, and inmates fight to die, the entertainment organizations could take advantage of this to make the reality TV shows about life in prisons. This would attract not only Americans, but also other foreign countries. Because most people, especially those are under fifty, want to see violent scenes. Indeed, ninety percent of movies and sixty percent of TV shows today show depictions of violence (Nor, 1). For example, WE, a fighting show, has twenty million viewers in a single week.
Nevertheless, WE is still staged by actors who are called superstars. On the other hand, we have real fighters in prisons, and they will try their best to fight for their life. Everything happening in prisons are real, and people would even love watching it more than WE for its reality and brutality. As many people watch these prison shows, it would increase the nation’s economy because people will spend money to see them. With all mentioned above, this is one of the best solutions for the prison overcrowding problem at the moment.
