Thursday, August 15, 2019

Why both incarceration and crime rates dropped in 34 states

The United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world, with slightly under 1.5 million in state and federal prisons and 750,000 in local jails in 2017. But "between 2007 and 2017, 34 states reduced both imprisonment and crime rates simultaneously, showing clearly that reducing mass incarceration does not come at the cost of public safety," Cameron Kimble and Ames Grawert report for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Though the nationwide crime rate is near a 40-year low, the drop in prison population from 2007 to 2017 is more because of court orders and policy changes, Kimble and Grawert report. There is considerable state and regional variation too: at the ends of the spectrum are Massachusetts, whose imprisonment rate fell by half, and Arkansas, whose rate increased 19 percent. Massachusetts was helped by the steepest decline in crime rate in the nation, about 40%; a lot was due to new laws that reduced sentences for non-violent drug offenders and decriminalized small amounts of marijuana.

"It’s tough to say why some states successfully reduced their prison population while others failed. One possible commonality relates to socioeconomic well-being. Over half of the states where imprisonment rates grew had poverty rates above the national average as well," Kimble and Grawert report. "Those states were also some of the hardest hit by the opioid epidemic. West Virginia typifies this experience: crime rates dropped, but incarceration rose amidst the state’s struggles with opioid abuse and poverty."

Much of the Deep South, including Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, saw reductions in imprisonment rates, but many of those states still have some of the largest prison populations in the nation. "The Northeast saw the largest average decline in imprisonment rate (24%), with only Pennsylvania recording an increase (3%). Crime rates also dropped fastest in the Northeast region, falling by just over 30% on average," Kimble and Grawert report.

Meanwhile, the imprisonment rate in the Midwest dropped an average of only 1%; that was mostly because of a 20% reduction in Michigan due to criminal justice reforms focusing on reducing recidivism. Some central states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee either stalled or increased their imprisonment rates. The rising opioid epidemic and punishment-focused response may be at the root. "Kentucky, for example, recently increased penalties for heroin trafficking and doubled penalties for crimes involving fentanyl," Kimble and Grawert report.

No comments: