The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/tag/mass-incarceration/)
The debate over decarceration has been upended by distracting calls for prison abolition, writes a justice reform advocate. He argues that reformers should instead examine what led Europe down a different path and determine how best to develop a system more closely resembling the ones found on the continent.
After significant declines in jail and prison populations during COVID, the trend appears to have stalled, reports the Vera Institute of Justice. “This pattern speaks to the political, economic, and social entrenchment of mass incarceration,” Vera researchers warned.
The mass incarceration policies in Alabama, Florida and Louisiana serve as both a warning and an object lesson for the rest of the country, says a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Who’s behind bars in America? An interactive resource developed by the Vera Institute of Justice that breaks down jail and prison data by state and county finds some troubling answers to that question.
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.