Name :University :Course :University :Date :Introduction The problem of prison congestion has been persistent for a very long time now . According to Reichel (2001 .47-63 ) there were more than 2 million prisoners in the federal and state prisons and jails in 2000 .This marked a 2 .7 percent increment from the previous year and the trend has shown an upward trend something which demands for options to the imprisonment and jailing . These inmates represented racial patterns with the majority of the inmates being African Americans , followed by Hispanics and the whites (Reichel , 2001 .55-66 .Much of the correction in the United States is the responsibility of the department of correctional services with offices in all the states . The activities of the correctional facilities are responsible for the confinement as well as the rehabilitation of the inmates . Placing the inmates in the respective facilities is determined by the needs of the inmates , the availability of the facilities as well as the security risk associated with the inmate (Reichel , 2001 .48-68 . In order to achieve significant prison population reduction , there is a need to shift the reliance on bed capacity to strategies such as community programs ,especially for non-violent criminals by increasing rehabilitation programs as well as the establishment of partnerships between public and private corrections .There is also a need to review the sentencing policies inorder to make sure hat they are not too tough and therefore a cause for the swelling prison numbers . The paroles also need to be reviewed to make sure that they are practical and enforceable inorder to make sure that those who are released from the prisons do not re-enter the prison due to parole failure . Considering the effectiveness of an early release program can also solve the prison population program .The United States has correctional facilities both run by the public and some private . The correctional facilities in the US include prisons ,prison forestry camps and farms , prison hospitals , detention facilities ,classification centers as well as youthful offenders ‘ centers (Beck ,1995 .5-9 . Correctional facilities play an important role in the society where crime is on the increase . Correctional facilities are important in that they protect the public from the offenders who if left to co-exist with the public are likely to continue to harm the society .Taking offenders to correctional centers is also an opportunity for offenders to get an opportunity to reform and be rehabilitated .Correctional theory is based on the argument that the offenders will always repeat their harmful actions and hurt the rest of the public or their victims and therefore the only remedy which is useful is to make sure that offenders and victims never meet . Therefore correctional facilities serve to offer this much required separation between the two parties . Therefore the physical separation of the offenders and the public is not only seen as an effective way of punishing criminals but as a deterrent measure in that , when the criminals are left out there ,they keep on influencing negatively their…