High Incarceration Rates Although America is home to only five percent of the world's population, it contains 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population, this is why reform must be carried out to reduce incarceration rates. which will in turn reduce the costs paid by American citizens. What's the problem? The fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world is problematic enough, what makes the problem worse is that the United States does not have the space available to house all the inmates it behind bars. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, at the end of 2014, approximately 6,851,000 people were under the supervision of the U.S. adult correctional system and 2.2 million people in the correctional system were incarcerated in prisons or jails , a jump from the year 2000 when there was the total correctional population was 6,467,800 people and 1,945,400 people were incarcerated (2015). The prison population in the United States is out of control and prisons are exceeding their maximum occupancy capacity. Something needs to change to reduce the number of people in prison. On May 23, 2011, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision ruled that the state of California must reduce its prison population due to medical and mental health care not meeting standards of care. . to reduce their population to 137.5% of design capacity, which meant California had to release 40,000 inmates (Brown v. plata, 2011). The result of overcrowding in prisons is that criminals will be made public, as shown in Brown v. Plata. What do the experts say? According to Justice Scalia, "terrible things are sure to happen as a result of this scandalous order, justice...... middle of paper...... the filling of the prison population, the legislation and the Courts will monitor this for the Department of Corrections. which has negative effects on public safety as dangerous criminals are released. Solutions to keep incarceration numbers low, reduce incarceration numbers, the two ways to do this are to “eliminate mandatory sentencing and eliminate probation and parole revocations” (Clear , TR and Austin, J. 2009). Clear goes further and explains that the reason for the growth of prisons is "the reduction in the use of probation as a punishment for those convicted of crimes, particularly drug crimes." In short, laws that impose mandatory prison sentences for drug offenses must be replaced with probation sentences: "Before the laws imposing prison sentences in the U.S. prison population, about six percent, they are now by about twenty percent. » Clear, TR, & Austin, J.. (2009).