Can We Wait 75 Years to Cut the Prison Population in Half?

Overview

The U.S. prison population grew by more than 600% between 1973 and 2009—from 200,000 people to 1.6 million. Tough-on-crime policies expanded the number of imprisoned people even while crime rates plunged to 40% below their levels in the 1990s.¹ In recent years, policymakers and criminal justice professionals have implemented reforms to correct the punitive excesses of the past. By yearend 2016 the number of people held in U.S. prisons had declined by 6% since a 2009 peak, and crime rates have continued to decline.²

But the overall impact of reforms has been quite modest. With 1.5 million people in prison in 2016, the prison population remains larger than the total population of 11 states.³ If states and the federal government maintain their recent pace of decarceration, it will take 75 years—until 2093—to cut the U.S. prison population by 50%. Expediting the end of mass incarceration will require accelerating the end of the Drug War and scaling back sentences for serious crimes.

U.S. Prison Population Trends: 1999-2016

Incarceration trends vary significantly among the states, as detailed in Table 1 and Figure 2. By 2016, 42 states had at least modestly downsized their prison populations from their peak levels. Six states lead the nation in reducing their prison populations by 25% or more:

• New Jersey (37% decline since 1999)
• Alaska (33% decline since 2006)
• New York (31% decline since 1999)
• Vermont (29% decline since 2009)
• Connecticut (28% decline since 2007)
• California (25% decline since 2006, though some have been redirected to local jails)

Some Southern states, which have exceptionally high rates of incarceration, have also achieved double-digit percentage reductions in their prison populations since reaching their peak levels. These include:

• Mississippi (14% decline since 2008)
• South Carolina (13% decline since 2009)
• Alabama (12% decline since 2012)
• Louisiana (11% decline since 2012)

The federal prison population declined 13% between 2011 and 2016, twice the nationwide rate of decarceration. The number of people in federal prisons continued to decline in 2017, despite the “law and order” rhetoric of President Trump and Attorney General Sessions.⁴

These reductions are the result of a mix of changes in policy and practice designed to reduce admissions to prison and lengths of stay. Moreover, the states with the most substantial reductions in their prison populations have often outpaced the nationwide crime drop.

But overall, the pace of decarceration has been very modest in most states. In 20 states the prison population reduction is less than 5%. Texas and Florida, which rank first and third highest among states in the size of their prison populations, have reduced their prison populations by just 4% since reaching their peak levels.⁵ Eight states had not achieved any prison population reductions by 2016, even though most are experiencing crime rates that are far below their peak levels. Among these states, the largest 5-year increases in prison populations since 2011 have occurred in Kentucky, with a 10% increase, and in South Dakota and Nevada, each with an 8% increase.

Click to read the full brief