The United States of America houses the most prisoners worldwide. Of that number sixty percent were charged of non-violent crimes. Many of these crimes are drug related in nature. Starting in the 1970's the Federal Government started an initiative to lock up people convicted of drug offenses and other non-violent crimes. Because of these initiatives prison populations have risen by three hundred and eighty percent. To put that in perspective the United States Census data revealed that the nation's population rose only thirty-three percent during the same period. Comparatively speaking, the number of people incarcerated in state and federal facilities has grown ten times faster than the rate of our entire population. The purpose of prison is to rehabilitate criminals and help keep them from committing crimes in the future while punishing them for their wrongdoings. However this system of sending so many people to prison is obviously not working as over forty percent of convicts and convicted on new charges within three years of being released from prison. Not to mention that housing so many inmates cost the United States an estimated seventy billion dollars annually and much more lost in the economies as thousands of workers are taken from the workforce. So is there a way to combat this rising problem across the nation? The answer is house arrest.
House arrest is when a criminal is sentenced to stay in their home at all times except when working or preforming essential tasks such as grocery shopping and is only offered to those who have been convicted of non-violent crimes. Criminals on house arrest are drug tested often and have to keep a daily log of their events as well as perform community service, pay weekly and monthly fines to help cover the cost of their house arrest, and attend rehabilitation classes. House arrest provides numerous advantages over the prison system. First, it costs the government much less money to sentence someone to house arrest rather than a prison sentence.