Prison overcrowding is one of the largest problems facing the American criminal justice system today. Many people may think this issue does not affect them, but the problem becomes important when overcrowding forces prisoners to be granted early release. "In cases of extreme brutality, the sentence served by criminals can be short. Because prison space in the is tight, each offender can be accommodated only briefly. Prison overcrowding causes a controversy of positive and negative …showed first 75 words of 1214 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1214 total…for a drug related offense, but declined to about 246,000 in 2001 (Seiter 274). At the beginning of the war on drugs, most of the people arrested were males. Now females have shown a drastic increase of those incarcerated. In 1990 the number of women convicted for drug charges was around 43,000. By the end of 1996 that number rose to almost 60,000. The number of women arrested on drug charges was about 272,000 in 1998, not that much less than their male counterparts.