From Brennan Center for Justice
For decades, the federal government used its grant-making power to spur states to incarcerate more people and to impose longer sentences. It should now use that power to reverse course.
Few issues have received more sustained attention from U.S. policymakers over the last decade than the country’s unique overuse of incarceration. After decades of growth in imprisonment rates, states have attempted to reduce the number of people behind bars. Their reforms have been driven by a recognition that incarceration is expensive and often counterproductive and by research demonstrating that many people can be safely supervised in the community. Much incarceration is also unnecessary. According to a 2016 Brennan Center for Justice report, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison population is incarcerated without any compelling public safety justification. Incarceration degrades people’s humanity, disrupts their social networks, and causes lifelong social and financial disadvantage through restricted access to education, jobs, and housing. It also devastates families and communities, disproportionately affecting society’s most marginalized segments.
Reforms have reduced the population behind bars from its 2009 peak, yet an astonishing level of incarceration persists: today over 1.2 million people are confined to federal and state prisons, and just over 636,000 more are locked up in local jails. Few states have achieved significant reductions in their prison populations, and in some places these populations have begun to grow again.
For a half century, the federal government has harnessed its grant-making power to spur states to incarcerate more people and to impose longer sentences, making the United States the most punitive country in the country. It can now use that same funding power to reverse course.
Continue reading the report here.
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