People-Centered Justice – Article by Martin van der Kroon
Martin van der Kroon
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 2015, there were an estimated 6,741,400 people supervised within the U.S. criminal-justice system, 2,173,800 of whom are in either state or federal correctional facilities.
It is in itself concerning that the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has to ‘estimate’ the number of people within the system. One would think that BJS would know exactly how many people are within the criminal-justice system, or at least that ought to be the case. Regardless of whether the numbers are 100% accurate, the prison population and incarceration rate are both very high compared to any other Western nation relative to population size. The U.S. also has among the longest sentences in the Western world.
One of the issues I believe is of particular influence is the reasoning that creating a more severe punishment will make it a better deterrent. Regardless of severity, this is a retributivist judicial system, the type used in most countries around the world.