by TANIA OLIVARES
Staff Writer
The U.S is claimed to have the highest prison population compared to any other country. The article claims that, “The U.S is now home to a quarter of the world’s inmates, despite making up just 5 percent of the global population”(The Week 1). The article even claims that 40% of these prisoners are African-American (This can easily connect to last weeks article). Because of so many prisoners, Texas has come up with an alternative. The Texas governor, Rick Perry, believes that not giving these prisoners a second chance “isn’t what America is about.” So, “Perry poured $241 million into funding drug-treatment alternatives that would send offenders to rehab rather than prison, as well as expanding probation programs and giving well-behaved inmates credits that could buy them an early release”(The Week 1). Other states do similar things, such as programs and rehab to help these prisoners have a second chance. Yet there’s an argument that these alternatives don’t work. It’s pretty debatable if prison and rehab works, or not, but these states keep doing it in hopes to revive our country, and these many prisoners within it. The taxpayers pay about $80 billion to keep them locked up. But in Texas they thought of other ways to fix that problem, like sending offenders to rehab rather than prison. That solution was really good because Texas dropped 3% since 2010.