Alternatives to incarceration

An alternative to incarceration is any kind of punishment or treatment other than time in prison or jail that can be given to a person who is convicted of committing a crime. Alternatives can take the form of capital punishment, exile, fines, restorative justice, corporal punishment, transformative justice, or the abolition of incarceration entirely. Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts. The United States’ prison population topped 2 million inmates for the first time in history on June 30, 2002. By this time, America’s jails held 1 in every 142 U.S. residents. Since 1997, there has been a 5.4% increase in prison inmates and the numbers will continue to rise unless alternatives to what are adopted.

The prison abolition movement attempts to eliminate prisons and the prison system. Prison abolitionists see the prisons as an ineffective way to decrease crime and reform criminals. They also believe the modern criminal justice system to be racist, sexist, and classist. One of the many arguments made for prison abolition is that the majority of people accused of crime cannot afford to pay a lawyer. The Anarchist Black Cross was a key group involved in the prison abolition movement that still persists today. A variety of proposed alternatives to prisons arose from the prison abolition movement.

The prison reform and alternatives to incarceration has been largely supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC). The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime promotes reform from an argumentative point of view that includes human rights considerations, imprisonment and poverty, public health consequences of imprisonment, detrimental social impacts and the cost of imprisonment. The UNODC highly encourages member nations to adopt alternatives to incarceration, dropping the traditional ways to punishment such as imprisonment and parole.

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