The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/tag/mass-incarceration/)
America’s high incarceration rates have emerged as a hot political issue, but the supposed shift in public attitudes towards punishment may be “overstated,” warns a University of Illinois law professor. Andrew Leipold argues we should lower our expectations about what’s possible to achieve in the short term, while applying pressure on prosecutors to recognize their role in driving high prison numbers.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University contends that the data show “clearly that reducing mass incarceration does not come at the cost of public safety.” The total number of state prisoners dropped 6 percent over the same decade, 2007 to 2017.
Recent reports suggest the federal government and a majority of states have slowed or stopped increasing prison populations in recent years. But it will take a much more aggressive strategy to significantly affect mass incarceration, says a leading criminologist.
The decline parallels the drop in state and federal prison populations between 2007 and 2017, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. But about two-thirds of those confined to jail cells in 2017—roughly 425,000 people—hadn’t been convicted of any crime.
The falling national incarceration rate in 2018—a 1.8 percent overall decrease relative to the population—was driven mainly by a substantial drop-off in the federal Bureau of Prisons and a handful of key states, including the incarceration juggernauts New York, Missouri, and the Carolinas.
At a Washington, D.C., panel, Govs. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Phil Bryant of Mississippi told their colleagues that investing in prisoner education should be a top priority.
Congress shouldn’t rest on its laurels following the landmark sentencing overhaul bill signed into law in December, writes one of the original advocates of the legislation. He argues the changes should be part of a major ongoing effort to reform the U.S. justice system.
Restoring access to Pell Grants for post-secondary education in prison would also increase employment rates among formerly incarcerated people across the United States by nearly 10 percent, according to a study by the Vera Institute of Justice and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.
Not everyone welcomed the election of reform-minded prosecutors around the country last fall. The case of new Suffolk County. Ma., DA Rachael Rollins is an example of pushback from tough-on-crime advocates, warns a reform advocate.
Fordham’s John Pfaff reprises his 2017 book’s critique of the criminal justice reform movement with a new and pessimistic take on the state of play in dismantling mass incarceration.