me received because of the new laws has shown an increase in the individual who is being sentenced and the type of offense they are sentenced for. “According to the National Prison Survey 1991, a disproportionate numbers of prisoners are drawn from inner city areas.”(May, J 2000) It has also been shown that among the black and Asian prisoners, drug offenses were the most common type of offense. A study done by Mumola and Beck in 1997 approximates that 23% of state inmates are incarcerated on drug related charges and 60% of federal inmates are incarcerated due to drug offenses. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics that stated 1.2 million Americans were imprisoned by 1996. Out of that number of people about 75,000 of these incarcerated were women. The growth of female inmates average 11.2% higher than the growth of men, which only average about 7.9%. This group of women seems to follow the same pattern. They seem to be extremely poor, under the age of thirty-five, minority and single. Another population that makes up prisons is those with mental illness. About 1.7 million offenders in jails and prisons are mentally ill. The mental illnesses range usually from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression. The increasing number of African Americans, women and drug offenders in the jails and prison system today indicate that something needs to be done to decrease those numbers but because of the numerous problems in areas where these individuals usually dwell, cause them to come in constant contact with police making them a more accessible target.. By evaluating the policing style and the way they have changed over the last 100 years, one can see how its change has changed the prison population. During the early years when policing was primarily as a form of protection for the elite members of society, many crimes when undetected. Because policing is now based on protecting people as a whole, the amount of crim...
