Posted on 02/09/2015 9:29:01 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Criminal justice reform is a contentious political issue, but there’s one point on which pretty much everyone agrees: America’s prison population is way too high. It’s possible that a decline has already begun, with the number of state and federal inmates dropping for three years straight starting in 2010, from an all-time high of 1.62 million in 2009 to about 1.57 million in 2012. But change has been slow: Even if the downward trend continues, which is far from guaranteed, it could take almost 90 years for the country’s prison population to get down to where it was in 1980 unless the rate of decline speeds up significantly.
What can be done to make the population drop faster?
~snip~
In a conversation with Slate, Pfaff explains his theory.
The U.S. prison population increased fivefold between 1980 and 2009—from approximately 320,000 inmates to 1.62 million. When you look at the work of scholars and the policymakers who are influenced by them, what do you see as the dominant explanations for why this happened?
One is that we’re sending people to prison for more and more and more time. The other is the war on drugs—that we’ve made this concerted effort to target people for drug dealing and drug possession, and we’re filling up our prisons with all of these drug-related offenses. The dominant view is that those two changes have transformed the size of the prison population in the United States.
What do you think of those two explanations?
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Has the percentage of drug offenders among the prison population been higher in the past?
Why are you skeptical of the idea that longer sentences have been a significant driver of the prison boom?
OK. So if it’s not the drug war, and it’s not harsh sentencing laws, what is it? What do you think caused the prison boom?
So why did the prison population keep on rising after 1991, when the crime wave ended? It seems like if your theory is right, that the increase in violent crime and property crime caused the prison boom, the end of the crime wave should have been accompanied by decreasing incarceration rates.
More....
“Click the link to see the answers...”
Slate?
No thanks.
This - and many other articles and well-researched data - disprove the libertarian notice that if we but surrendered in the WOD, we would solve our criminal and incarceration problems.
One thing is clear. Drugs - legal or illegal - only serve to increase property crimes, violent crimes and increases our prison population.
To say nothing of what drugs do to our unemployment and welfare roles.
But hey.... Who am I to deny your right to get wasted? Even if I have to pay for it?
1980? the start of Reagan’s administration?
my political bs meter just pegged.
I read it and it was babble. No answer to the questions poised.
1. Because a lot of people commit crimes.
Yeah. I tend to agree. I kept reading to see what the good professor says IS the reason to higher incarceration rates.
I believe it's recidivism .
What a Great Society!
Why not? They’re just reporting on information from other sources. It pays to know what that information is, to be aware of it.
I read it and it’s an interesting explanation for why the prison population increased when crime was going down!
I skimmed the article. Bottom line (his theory) is that the DAs across country are more agressive and charging more crimes as felonies. That is all the article said. Kind of left off any reason for it . Kind of implied it was bad. For myself, i am glad we have 1.6 million people in prison and not on the streets terroring people. I have been the vitim of crime and i say get them all off the streets.
Slate web site too bloated.
Skip to table 7 page 8. From what I can tell ya got 12-13% of the population (blacks)leading the pack.
Yep. See post 5.
You guys nailed it. LBJ is our worst president. Ever. B. Hussein will soon overtake him, but most of what Johnson did some 50 years ago still haunt us and is causing severe social damages to this very day.
It didn’t say that prison pop going down because police have taken to killing innocent blacks instead of incarcerating them?
Well, that goes without say.
Black males between 17 and 35 years (3% of the population) commit some 50% of crimes.
Simple, The Crusades!
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