As the intensity of the economic crunch continues to weigh down on more and more countries, the poor citizens continue to experience hardships in their day-to-day lives. Skyrocketing food prices, expensive medication, high cost of housing, job lay-offs, etc are continuing to ruin the lives of poor citizens. Consequently, they are forced to devise methods that would assist them to earn a living. Unfortunately, they cannot afford to get a decent job that could enable them to earn enough money to raise their families. This leads to indulgence in other dubious means of earning a living. What repercussions do this offer in return? The results are swelling and an increasingly swelling number of inmates in prisons. This eventually forces the government to devise some strategies that would help the increasing number of inmates to gain something above the normal corrective measures that are the ultimate role of imprisonment. This essay will discuss the programs offered to inmates and show how they are of importance to not only the inmates but also the general citizens of the United States of America. The essay will discuss how equipping the inmates with appropriate skills will serve as a more powerful corrective measure in addition to the other punitive measured employed by the government. In addition, the essay will also discuss how programs such as caring for the family of the incarcerated can help reduce cases of trauma due to increased economic hardships and the stigma. These and other discussions in this essay will therefore make the reader understand that the programs offered to the inmates are of great benefit to the socio-economic welfare of the United States. Statistics and Demographics To make appropriate programs to assist both in preventing further arrests and reducing re-arresting those who have completed their jail terms, it is important to understand the common denominator among the inmates to have a clear insight of the reasons that highly contribute to imprisonment. This calls for the inclusion of clear prison demographics and statistics. The demographics will therefore give an insight into what back grounds the inmates had and consequently the reasons that are likely to have caused the arrest of the person. This can assist to help prevent more arrests in the future. By helping reduce the arrests, the general security of the country becomes better. The most common and pronounced relationship between prisoners is their history of poverty (Clark pg.61). Other most common features of inmates are that most of them are children of single-parent families. Thirdly, most of them are people whose ethnicities are not white and finally, a good number of inmates are those people who exhibited difficulties in learning and reading abilities. It is therefore important that one understands such traits before considering the government initiatives towards the inmates. By the year 2005, the total number of inmates stood at two million across the United States according to the Bureau of Justice (Clark pg.61). 66% of these were either in state or federal prisons while the rest were in local prisons. It is important to note that these were the cases that were imprison