In 2015 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted a report to the office of the high commissioner for human Rights. In this report U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is quoted as stating “This idea of total incarceration just isn’t working.” In the following text the author will act as an analyst in the Federal Bureau of Prisons and present a breakdown of the current incarceration trends in the American prison system. The analysis will assess the prison environment as experienced by different classifications of prisoners. categorize the various reform efforts, including the development of juvenile corrections, while discussing how the philosophy of corrections has changed over time. Prison Population & Overcrowding There are approximately 2.1 million people incarcerated within the United States. Of those 2.1 million inmates, around 600,000 are released yearly (Stojkovic, 2008). Those individuals released annually may have just as much to contribute to the increasing prison population as the widely considered variable; gender, race and types of crimes. In his paper, sociologist Ryan King (2016) describes the Nation’s prison population problem as a persistent mass incarceration problem rather than a mass incarceration problem. According to King (2016) Factors contributing to persistent incarceration results from an increase in crime rates during the 1970s through 1990s, the war on drugs, and the deluge of people who were then encumbered with criminal records as a result of the two. King (2016) goes on to argue that because of the manner in which sentencing guidelines are made those individuals are more likely to be sent back to prison on for future offenses. Through reducing recidivism, the United States would lower the number of people incarcerated. Some of the health conditions which are clearly represented throughout correctional institutions are; human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), other infectious diseases, substance abuse, and mental illness to name just a few. Roy Warmsley (2005), describes the negative impact overcrowding in prisons has on the health care of those incarcerated. Warmsley presents the argument that international standards requires prisons have appropriate space for prisoners instead of the estimated 70% of prison which are currently overcrowded (Warmsley, 2005). Most prisons in the United States are occupied far above official capacity, making it difficult to both supervise inmates and maintain a healthy environm>