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Movement for Alternatives to Incarceration
The prison reform and alternatives to incarceration has been largely supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC). The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime promotes reform from an argumentative point of view that includes human rights considerations, imprisonment and poverty, public health consequences of imprisonment, detrimental social impacts and the cost of imprisonment. The UNODC highly encourages member nations to adopt alternatives to incarceration, dropping the traditional ways to punishment such as imprisonment and parole.

Human Rights Issues
Imprisonment often takes away the basic liberties of human rights as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many inmates in the U.S. prison system have voiced the inhumane conditions that they were subjected to during their time. While prisons enforce and encourage inmates to receive counselling sessions to regain their confidence and find ways to reintegrate into the society again, many inmates expressed that their hard-earned self-esteem is regularly stripped away by the prison policies. Some women prisoners have voiced that even though it seems nice to be able to leave the prison complex for a while, they would rather not leave the penal institutions complex because of the degrading strip search that awaits them upon their return. For those who have experience sexual abuse, the obligatory search brings up traumatic experiences and episodes. Similar to this example, many inmates are subjected to unfair treatments and abuse from prison guards.

Financial and Socioeconomic Impacts
Incarceration affects the financial circumstances of families by means of taking away financial sources, thus putting the families of incarcerated into an endless cycle of poverty, marginalization and criminality. The socioeconomic situations of nations are thus greatly impacted. Mass incarceration has been found to decrease the overall economic circumstances of families. With the increase and spike of incarceration rates, many families continue to fall below the official poverty rate, thereby magnifying the hourglass economy. Statistics from a study of released inmates show that populations are finding difficulty to re-integrate back into the society, and have a high rearrest rates. This is due in part from the overcrowding of jail cells and the high concentration of diseases and substance abuse. The environment that most of these inmates are exposed to is not a positive influence for motivation to change for the better. Rearrest rates in addition to newly convicted individuals, add on to the burden of taxpayers and society's economy.

Public Health Consequences
Financial circumstances are not the only factor affected when one is imprisoned. Many offenders who enter prisons have existing health conditions which they hope to seek treatment for during their time served, as financial circumstances do not allow them to regularly receive medical help. However, their conditions only continue to worsen after their time at penal institutions. Due to the increased, overcrowded populations of prisons and the lack of medical personnels, many of the prisoners' conditions deteriorate. The conditions of these inmates upon release will only further worsen public health rates increasing the incidences of HIV infections, substance abuse and tuberculosis on the society.

Many groups and organizations have stepped forward to push for an end to incarceration. These groups, for example, the Anarchist Black Cross have developed a strong passion to abolish the prison system completely. Research done by many professionals, particularly from that of the legal, political science and criminal justice field have shown that Alternatives to Incarceration bring more benefits to the society in the long run as compared to imprisonment. The prison abolition movement is not only driven by the benefits that released inmates will have when re-integrating back to the society but also through the restructuration of the economy and the activation of antiglobalization movements.