In the last two and a half decades, prison crowding has more than tripled in the United States.1 The rate of imprisonment has burgeoned to three and even four times that of Most European countries, while the development in holding facilities has remained negligibly shy.2 As a direct result, recent years have witnessed the growth of a new problem in America: substantial prison overcrowding. Efforts to keep overcrowding at bay have been historically simplistic, often propelled by ideas to simply build more jails; these propositions are fatally incomplete and static. Prison populations are on climactic rise as a result of various independent agencies, factors, and actions; legislation that increases penalties for criminal behavior, stiffer rules regarding minor infractions, deployment of police, and paroling policies are all separate factors that contribute to the overall dilemma of overcrowding. Because the problem of prison overcrowding is so broad, minor transformations like the addition of more prisons hold little hope for an issue demanding broad understanding and systematic change.

             Looking at the household problem of overcrowded prison, it is deceptively easy to assume prisons are civil houses with too many tenants; and, like a family does when it has reached its maximum household capacity, comfortable and effective lifestyles are made possible in a new, more compatible home. Prisons are not subject to the same quasi-reasonable solutions; they are part of the larger system of judicial punishment, executive action, and civil protection. By the end of the century, providing for these prisoner populations was already a large financial drain upon the American government and, ultimately, the American taxpayers whose safety depended on the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. At this point, "annual government outlays on prisons [were] roughly $40 billion per year.