I was glad to see that my post on the declining rate of incarceration in the U.S. was picked up by a number of other blogs and newspapers. In those fora, a number of people argued that the recent decrease is simply a function of state budgets being tight. The Pew Charitable Trusts has a thoughtful analysis out suggesting that it is more complex than that.
The number of people incarcerated went up every single year from the mid 1970s until 2009. Over that more than 30 year period, there have been economic booms and contractions, changes in the relative strength of the major political parties, alterations in the demographic makeup of the US general population, the waxing and waning of drug epidemics, and countless other changes in American life. What that should tell us is that any simple explanation for why America has the prison policy it does at any given time is wrong or at least incomplete.
Pew notes that over the past 5 years, incarceration fell in 29 states (ruling out another simple explanation: that this is all due to the court order to reduce overcrowding in California prisons). The factors Pew describes as important are
(1) The evident success of states like Texas which have reduced imprisonment, costs and crime at the same time
(2) Widespread public/political support for reduced incarceration, including among influential conservatives
(3) Research-based alternatives to prison. These include “swift-and-certain” probation and parole initiatives such as HOPE Probation and 24/7 sobriety, both of which have been touted by the Obama Administration.
To Pew’s list, it would be reasonable to add the aging of the incarcerated population because older prisoners are unlikely to re-offend after release. Also important have been the sharp reduction in crime and attendant decline in public fear of victimization, and, the almost total disappearance in Washington and many state capitols of lock-em-up rhetoric regarding low-level drug crimes.
Mark,
The list of factors misses what may be the most significant: reduction of lead in the environment. Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has been covering this quite well. See:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime-correlation-also-causation
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime-response-jim-manzi
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime-linkfest
Plus a bunch of others.
Tom
I think it’s worth pointing out that while incarceration fell in 29 states, it also rose in 20. MInd you, it’s still a significant net positive effect, but not quite as good as the report’s wording makes it sound.
Also, what Tom said about lead (minus him calling you Mark
). While there are doubtlessly many causes that contribute, there’s strong evidence that lead is likely to be a major factor (refutable, of course, but so far serious attempts at refutation seem to have failed, from what I know). Especially when you’re looking for causes that are independent of “economic booms and contractions, changes in the relative strength of the major political parties, alterations in the demographic makeup of the US general population, the waxing and waning of drug epidemics, and countless other changes in American life”.
Hi Katja,
If you remove the 30+ years of context, 29 of 50 seems bad, but if you include it, it seems good. I don’t know the state by state breakdown but I assume that if we charted how many states went up each of the past 30 years, only 20 would be on the low end (maybe the lowest).
As you know as a regular reader, we debated Kevin Drum’s lead story quite a bit here at RBC regarding crime. Lead can’t as you know directly explain the prison rate because prison is conditional on crime and criminal justice policy. What would be fun to model would be the implied causal chain running from less lead to less crime, and then on to less prison as a much lagged effect (because imprisonment kept going up for the early years of the big crime drop).
https://thesamefacts.com/2013/01/crime-control/getting-the-remaining-lead-out/
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