User:Kevintxwu/sandbox

Benefits of alternatives to incarceration
There are many benefits of alternatives to incarceration. These benefits can be summarized in four categories: Judicial, Economic, Social, and Safety.

Judicial Benefits
In the situation where courts are unable to decide which punishment best fits a specific case, a wide array of sentencing options is the best solution. Without other options, limiting both violent and non-violent, serious and non-serious crimes to the same prison sentence will cause not only turbulence in prison, but dissatisfaction in prisoners. Limiting consequences of crime to only imprisonment may lead to oversimplification of diverse and complicated crimes, resulting in the situation above. For a court to truly be cost-effective, fair, and efficient, other options like rehabilitation may be more favorable. For example, in the case of non-violent cases where an offender has some mental health issue, a mental health court would be a better solution.

Economic Benefits
It is also possible for alternatives to incarceration to save money and keep government lean. Federal prison and private prison solutions to crime cost over $28,000 per year per inmate. Any option that costs below this price point is a viable way to save money. In addition, cumulative costs resulting from prison overcrowding can be avoided, saving even more money. In comparison, a drug court system costs below $10,000 per year per offender. Less restrictions and better costs overall will overcome the cost of offering and managing multiple options, resulting in a leaner, more efficient economic system in total. Spending the full price as an inmate on each offender is more expensive than tailoring options for each separate case.

Social Benefits
The majority of adults, eight out of ten, believe that alternatives to incarceration, including systems like probation and community service are more appropriate sentences for nonviolent offenders. In general, the public is inclined towards being more lenient and more helpful for those that do not directly and immediately pose a threat to their communities. A majority believes using an alternative is a better option, which means that any systematic change towards that direction would be well-accepted and approved by citizens. A push for alternatives to incarceration in politics would lead to a more cohesive viewpoint between society and government policy.

Safety Benefits
Whereas prison does not have focused efforts designed to reform and redirect criminals towards better futures, oftentimes alternatives to incarceration do. A system like a drug court is a more reasonable way to treat certain types of offenders, ensuring that their behavior improves upon their release. Because these systems are designed specifically to reform and improve an individual's mindset, they lead to better results than a prison, which is solely designed to punish an individual's mindset, and remove them from their personal communities. This leads to a safer environment for everyone when these offenders finish their respective sentences and return to society.