The Growth of Incarceration in the United States Exploring Causes and Consequences (2014) / Chapter Skim
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Our work encompassed research on, and analyses of, the proximate causes of the dramatic rise in the prison population and the societal dynamics that supported those proximate causes. Our analysis reviewed evidence of the effects of high rates of incarceration on public safety as well as those in prison, their families, and the communities from which these men and women originate and to which they return.
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prisons come largely from the most disadvantaged segments of the population. They comprise mainly minority men under age 40, poorly educated, and often carrying additional deficits of drug and alcohol addiction, mental and physical illness, and a lack of work preparation or experience.
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Congress and most state legislatures enacted laws mandating lengthy prison sentences -- often of 5, 10, and 20 years or longer -- for drug offenses, violent offenses, and "career criminals." In the 1990s, Congress and more than one-half of the states enacted "three strikes and you're out" laws that mandated minimum sentences of 25 years or longer for affected offenders. A majority of states enacted "truth-insentencing" laws requiring affected offenders to serve at least 85 percent of their nominal prison sentences.
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This provided the context for a series of policy choices -- across all branches and levels of government -- that significantly in creased sentence lengths, required prison time for minor offenses, and intensified punishment for drug crimes. Consequences Relationships among incarceration, crime, sentencing policy, social inequality, and numerous other variables influencing the growth of incarceration are complex, change across time and place, and interact with each other.
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Coming from some of the most disadvantaged segments of society, many of the incarcerated entered prison in unsound physical and mental health. The poor health status of the inmate population serves as a basic marker of its social disadvantage and underlines the contemporary importance of prisons as public health institutions.
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With overcrowding, cells designed for a single inmate often house two and sometimes three people. The concern that overcrowding would create more violent environments did not materialize during the period of rising incarceration rates: rather, as the rates rose, the numbers of riots and homicides within prisons declined.
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GUIDING PRINCIPLES A broad discussion of principles has been notably absent from the nation's recent policy debates on the use of imprisonment. Beginning in the early 1970s, in a time of rising violence and rapid social change, policy makers turned to incarceration to denounce the moral insult of crime and to deter and incapacitate criminals.
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incar ceration rates dramatically rose over the past four decades. Normative principles have deep roots in jurisprudence and theories of governance and are needed to supplement empirical evidence to guide future policy and research.
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Given the evidence that incarceration has been overused when less harmful alternatives could plausibly achieve better individual and social outcomes, we specifically urge consideration of changes in sentencing and other policies. We also propose that policy makers and citizens rethink the role played by prisons in addressing public safety and seek out crime reduction strategies that are more effective and less harmful.
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Reducing the severity of sentences will not, by itself, relieve the underlying problems of economic insecurity, low edu cation, and poor health that are associated with incarceration in the nation's poorest communities. Solutions to these problems are outside the criminal justice system, and they will include policies that address school dropout, drug addiction, mental illness, and neighborhood poverty -- all of which are intimately connected to incarceration.
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RESEARCH RECOMMENDATION Recognizing that the knowledge base for many policies related to incarceration is limited, we urge the research community to work closely with the national and state governments and nongovernmental institutions to develop an ambitious and multifaceted portfolio of study to fill knowledge gaps in this field. For policy and public understanding, more studies are needed of the effects of various sanction policies, including those involving incarceration, on crime.
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