The American Bar Association has published this essay discussing America's ever-expanding prison population and its negative impact on the justice system.  An excerpt:

At midyear 2007, U.S. prisons and jails held 2,299,116 inmates, meaning more than 1 percent of American adults were incarcerated. We top the world in per capita imprisonment, increasing our lead every year. Since 2000, while the total U.S. population increased by 7 percent, our prison population has grown by 19 percent. Our massive imprisonment costs needless billions and, perversely, hinders effective crime control. We need to re­duce our prison population...

A rational criminal justice system would—while shortening sentences of certain offenders—keep others out of prison altogether. With alternative treatments and punishments, a state shrinks its prison budget, allows convicts to keep their jobs and support their families, and makes recidivism less likely.

But alternative programs work only when properly funded. A state spending every dollar on prisons may think it cannot afford drug treatment programs and fully staffed probation offices, especially when the economy demands budget cuts. The opposite is true: States cannot afford to neglect these programs or they will pay down the road tenfold—in prison costs, welfare budg­ets and elsewhere. Beyond monetary costs, cit­izens will suffer needless increased crime when of­fenders who never belonged behind bars eventually return to the community more dangerous than before...

My previous post, Mississippi Department of Corrections, Budget Cuts & Plea Negotiations, addressed the expense of incarceration in Mississippi as opposed to alternative methods of punishment, and detailed the Mississippi Department of Corrections' new cost-saving measures.  Let us hope that as our country grows older and wiser our thoughts on criminal punishment continue to mature as well.