Nationwide, every 7 minutes, another person enters prison. And every 14 minutes, someone returns to the street, beaten up and, most often, having suffered a lot of violence during their incarceration. Professionals will tell you that incarceration doesn't do much to stop crime, but we continue to spend billions of dollars locking up more and more people. We have become the country with the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world. (National Commission on Criminal Justice)This quote from Dave Kelly shows many of the current problems with the United States criminal justice system. The prison population is increasing because more inmates are admitted than released. These prisons have also become dangerous; inmates are exposed to a lot of violence inside the prison walls. These problems are not the result of modest spending on prisons, as evidenced by the billions of dollars spent on prisons to keep American citizens incarcerated. This dangerous and inefficient system must be reformed for the benefit of American citizens involved in it, whether by paying taxes or being incarcerated. Although fear of punishment deters crime, America's criminal justice system should focus on rehabilitation. In the past, the American justice system has focused on punishment and imprisonment and improved its ability to achieve this. In the United States, crime has generally been met with penalties and lengthy prison sentences. This has resulted in a rate of imprisonment that currently stands at almost 720 prisoners per 100,000 citizens (“People, not prisoners”). To provide enough space for all these prisoners, approximately...... middle of paper ......013: 4. General OneFile. Internet. April 18, 2014. “A lonely scandal. » America March 18, 2013: 5. General OneFile. Internet. April 16, 2014 Weissmueller, Zach. “Swift and certain punishment works better than harsh sentences. » Criminal justice. Ed. Merino Christmas. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Views. Rep. Excerpted from “Long Prison Sentences Are Wasteful Government Expenses”: Criminologist Mark Kleimanon replaces severity with speed and certainty. Reason (July 2011). Opposing viewpoints in context. Internet. April 23, 2014. Wilson, James Q. “Greater incarceration, culture change explain crime decline.” Criminal justice. Ed. Merino Christmas. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Views. Rep. from “Crime and the Great Recession.” City Journal 21.3 (summer 2011). Opposing viewpoints in context. Internet. April 23. 2014