“Our criminal justice system is not as smart as it should be” and “Mass incarceration is making our entire country worse off, and we need to do something about it” are what 'said President Obama. declared in 2015. Today, in 2020, five years later, despite all the changes made by the president to reform the legal system, there are still different problems in American society. The inappropriate use of prison for minor offenses and the overuse of pretrial detention in the United States is a hotly debated topic that often divides opinion. Indeed, because of this situation, in recent years we have discovered phenomena. such as mass incarceration and prison overcrowding. Although the high incarceration rate may seem like an insignificant factor, it plays a truly important role that no one should underestimate. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Currently, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, outpacing much larger countries like China and India, and more totalitarian countries like Russia and the Philippines. According to statistics, more than 2.12 million people are currently behind bars, in national prisons and jails. This situation seems worrying, not least because the number of prisoners has quadrupled from just 500,000 in 1980, but also because, although the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, the country is home to 25 percent of the world's prison population. We are facing an extremely relevant phenomenon, in fact, we know that the high rate of incarceration in recent years has expanded. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, statistics overwhelmingly demonstrate that the United States has a huge prison problem since most people are imprisoned for minor offenses such as driving with a suspended license, public drunkenness or grand larceny. display. What caused mass incarceration? One of the main reasons is the Crime Bill of 1994, authored by Joe Biden and proposed by President Clinton in Congress. The Crime Bill aimed to address street crime, which in the 1960s became a national political issue. Furthermore, this decree contains key provisions in all areas of the legal system and imposes severe sanctions on those who violate the law. He implemented many things, including the mandatory “three strikes” life sentence for repeat offenders. After the enactment of the Crime Bill, the United States contributed to a general boom in imprisonment and the beginning of an era of exceptional punitiveness. For the implementation of this legal project, more than 30 billion dollars were spent. Clinton increased funding to build prisons and hired about 100,000 more police officers, leading to a dramatic increase in incarceration. From an international perspective, there is a correlation between human rights and mass incarceration, particularly the The UN Human Rights Council has encouraged the United States to resolve the problem of incarceration which highlights different problems, including racial disparities. A really interesting document is the first ever UN report on mass incarceration, it focuses on describing the problems of this particular phenomenon and bringing it to the global spotlight. attention to the negative impact of mass incarceration on the enjoyment of human rights. The approach tohuman rights-based criminal justice focuses on "crime prevention and rehabilitation efforts: behavioral therapy, intensive mental health and substance abuse treatment, and prevention programs can reduce crime without destroying lives and families. » Mass incarceration is strictly linked to prison overcrowding, caused not only by insufficient prison capacity, but also by a high proportion of people who have not yet been sentenced, who represent more than two-thirds of all prisoners local prisons. Over the past 30 years, the number of laws in force has almost doubled; this is due to criminalization, a growing problem, which consists of excessive or abusive use of the criminal law, which generally leads to over-criminalization and punishment of many people. This modern phenomenon is caused by an excessive number of laws and regulations that have transformed America into an over-policed ​​country. The 8th Amendment to the US Constitution has a vital role in the phenomena mentioned above, it prevents the federal government from imposing harsh sanctions. sanctions against criminal defendants. Additionally, it asserts that “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.” Unfortunately, various elements demonstrate that there is no real implementation of this amendment in real life, in fact, we can see gaps between legal reality and objective reality. These differences became even more visible when analyzing the U.S. incarceration rate and the 8th Amendment side by side. Different legal cases like Brown v. Plata are perfect examples of lawsuits against mass incarceration and prison overcrowding. In this particular case, the United States Supreme Court ordered the state of California to reduce its prison population by approximately 40,000 felons or find another way to reach 137 percent of its design capacity, in a period of two years. The essential problem in this case was prison overcrowding in California prisons. At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, the overcrowding situation was out of control and, in fact, was the primary cause of inadequate medical and mental health care for inmates, thereby violating inmates' Eighth Amendment rights. . Other interesting legal cases are Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida's two cases show "cruel and unusual punishment" for convicted juveniles, differently from what the Eighth Amendment provides. The amicus brief urges the U.S. Supreme Court to evaluate global laws as indicators that life in prison without parole is indecent and considered excessive punishment for juveniles under 18. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes sentences. of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole against minors. These legal phenomena have a serious and negative impact on American society as a whole. In fact, the issues aren't just about individuals who have to spend time in prison, but they also involve other areas like communities, in ways that researchers are just beginning to explore. First, because they cause various psychological effects on individuals. prisoners of detainees. Some prisoners indeed suffer from post-incarceration syndrome and, in general, mental health disorders. Second, because it has a major effect on the health and well-being of the community, and particularly of poorer families. But these problems are not just about the impacthealth but also social. Third, due to its significant impact on the American economic system, mass incarceration costs approximately $182 billion each year. This economic impact also concerns families, in fact, children who lose even one parent due to incarceration risk growing up in conditions of poverty. To resolve all of these legal questions, we must reconfigure incarceration law. This amendment could also help us facilitate judicial review and transform the law into one that is more logical and fairer to citizens. Another reason to reconfigure this system is the existence of countless criminal acts, these acts in the American legal system are much more numerous than we can imagine and, as a result, we get a disorder caused by the multiplicity of laws. Such a difficult problem can lead people to innocent and unintentional violation of the rules and to a more complicated and insidious understanding of them by citizens. When it comes to the effectiveness of laws, one of the most debated laws is the three strike law. , this law consists of the application of a life sentence when a person reaches three crimes. To explain this law in a clearer light, we might liken it to the baseball term “three strikes and you’re out.” In fact, a baseball strike occurs when the batter swings at the ball and misses, or more generally when the ball reaches the "strike zone." When the batter gets three strikes, the baseball team can be said to be "out", the same thing happens in the legal field when a person reaches three felonies, they can undoubtedly be said to be "out". » or more precisely “outside society”, behind prison bars. The three-strikes law was enacted in an effort to limit recidivism, the tendency of a criminal to repeat undesirable behavior. At first glance, the law may seem like a positive idea to deter crime, but contrary to how things seem, it does not work. The evidence does not support the three strikes law, this is due to the fact that the law only functions as a deterrent against crime, it does not have real effectiveness, but on the contrary it significantly increases the penalties as the have shown numerous analyses. The three strikes law presents an obvious dilemma which mainly consists of the fact that people with three non-violent crimes can result in such a harsh sentence. Stanford Law School researchers showed that more than 4,000 inmates in California are serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses under the three-strikes law. Second, it does not always work effectively to limit crime violations, as community change claims. , “these laws encourage punishment rather than healing, and the vague language surrounding them criminalizes far more people than is fair.” Subsequently, we get the already discussed problem of mass incarceration, which has grown dramatically over time, there has been a 500% increase over the last forty years. The reasonableness of the law is generally linked to constitutional texts, it plays a preponderant role because it intends to reconcile normative reasons with concrete needs. In the United States, reasonableness is a prerequisite for judicial review of fundamental rights, but sometimes we can see a clear gap between the American Constitution and the reasonableness of law. In this case, this gap is particularly obvious while the phenomenon of..