Corrections_Today_Winter_2024-2025_Vol.86_No.4

PAST PRESIDENT’S CORNER

workshops? How many agencies will be accredited? Of course, we must wonder if there will even be an in-person Congress of Correction or will it all be virtual and totally international? With a growing population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, corrections will have to improve its focus on alternatives to incarceration. Corrections will have to search for newer and more effective ways to help people live law abiding lives. Continuing to incarcerate people at the same rate we have in the past will continue to have an adverse impact on society and on the Earth’s natural resourc es. Corrections responsibility to ensure public safety and return of fenders to society better than when they entered the correctional facility will require new, bold approaches and consider things that have yet to be considered. The American Correctional As sociation and its public and private partners can gather information from around the world bringing intellectual resources to the table and become a laboratory of ideas and new public safety and public correctional policies. The Con gress of Correction can become a forum for debate and discussion of ideas that will bring profession als and lay people together who will closely monitor the trends that are happening OUTSIDE the field of corrections that will impact corrections. Maybe we should pause for a moment and wonder, what will the 209 th Congress of Correction be like and how do we get there? Let the journey begin. CT

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Corrections responsibility to ensure public safety and return offenders to society better than when they entered the correctional facility will require new, bold approaches and consider things that have yet to be considered.

will reach nearly 370 million in 2080. This is would be an increase of 32,956,800 people in the USA, an increase of 10%. This would mean that during the next 56 years the United States would add the equiva lent of another state of Texas plus two million people. With the ever growing population of the world, the human consump tion of our natural resources has tripled. The World Counts Website asks how many planet Earths we will need in the future to provide resources and absorb our waste. The Website states, “The Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago and modern humans have existed for about 315,000 years. According to a study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) more than an third of Earth’s natural resources have been destroyed by humans in just thirty years … Not only has humanity used

up a third of nature’s resources, we keep on consuming them, at an in creasing rate. Today we need about 1,75 planets to provide the resources for our consumption and absorb our waste. By 2030, we wil need 2 planets. We only have one.” Bold approach to the future needed What does all this have to do with corrections and the Congress of Correction? It is entirely possible that some young corrections pro fessionals who attended their first Congress of Correction in Nashville, the 154 th Congress, will still be in corrections for the 209 th Congress of Correction, 55 years from now. What will the 209 th Congress of Correction look like? Will there be an exhibit hall and what will it feature? What will be discussed in

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