The Issue of Ever Increasing Prisoner Population in US

Overcrowded prisons are one of the emerging worries of the United States administration. Just like many of the American public schools, American prisons are a story of failure. The USA is often termed as a Police State and after the Patriotic Act, things certainly worsened to higher degrees.

Recently, Krittika Biswas, a girl of Indian origin, who is studying in New York City, sued the New York City government for $1.5 million and her claims were against a wrongful arrest on the suspicion of a crime that she didn’t commit. She was imprisoned for allegedly sending indecent, obscene emails to one of her teacher in Queen’s John Brown High School.

According to her lawyer, Krittika’s more than 24 hour arrest on February 8 was against international law, federal law, state law and the New York City law as well. The family of the girl was not informed about the arrest of the girl.'

According to Krittika, the police arrested her even though they had no evidence against her. She said, "They based it (the arrest) on basically nothing."

The things gets murkier by the fact that the actual culprit, a Chinese student who actually sent the emails to the teacher was neither suspended nor was he arrested. Krittika further said, "I don't know why he wasn't arrested... the principal pushed for my arrest."

Krittika further informed that police was hostile against her and tried to push her to confess for a crime that she never did. She said that a cop told her that if she didn’t confess, they will imprison her with prostitutes and HIV patients. She was brutally handcuffed in her school, she said, I was sitting there (school) with handcuffs on.”

Krittika actually experienced the ill-environment of jails in New York City. She said that she couldn’t drink water from the single water fountain present in her cell because some other person had vomited there. She also said that while it was too cold and she was shivering, she couldn’t use the blanket because the available blanket was too dirty to be used.

Krittika was in custody at 107th precinct and she was not allowed to use toilet for a long time. There was only a single and very small toilet in the cell which was occupied by other people and she was forced to pee in front of others. She said, "Eventually, I had to go in front of everyone."

While the incidence is indicating the harsh and rash attitude of New York Police against the citizens and the brutal behavior of the police against a student on mere grounds of suspicion, the major issue is about the ill-environment in American prisons.

Prisons in United States are notoriously famous for extremely unhealthy and unsafe living conditions and this may be one of the consequences of overcrowded prisons of US.

These prisons are not only overcrowded, some of them are used to imprison more than double of the maximum capacity of American prisons. As for example, in 2010, the number of prisoners in the California correction system was more than 160,000. However, the California correction system was built only for 80,000 prisoners.

Overcrowded prisons are a big problem for prisoners and especially for those prisoners who were imprisoned merely on alleged charges and suspicions while they are innocent in reality. However, the bigger is problem of overcrowded prisons is faced by those who are outside them and are forced to pay for maintaining those prisons. Obviously, it’s the tax-payers money which is used to maintain these overcrowded prisons. Wasting money on the imprisoning system of the United States is certainly a huge blot especially in current times when the nation is still trying to recover against the aftermath of 2007 economical turmoil. In 2009, the then governor of California, Schwarzenegger even proposed a plan for reducing the prison population by 36,000.

Overcrowded prisons become the effective reason for the failure of authorities to provide adequate physical and mental health services to prisoners. This results in high number of deaths in imprisonment. Situations become murkier if after the death of an imprisoned person, it is found that the person was wrongly imprisoned and he or she was absolutely innocent.

Recently, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for a 5 to 4 decision describing a prison system that failed to deliver minimal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced “needless suffering and death.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court commented that the conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Supreme Court ordered the state of California to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000.

While it is a good move, I really wonder if the conditions in which Krittika was forced to spend 24 hours in New York City’s imprisonment were any better than those for which the Supreme Court ruled against the California State.

First thing is, the police or government should not have any right to imprison any person just on the basis of suspicion without proper evidences and without confirming that the accused is really a culprit. The rule of Innocent until proved Guilty should be strictly applied to maintain the respect and liberty of Individuals in the United States.