Prison Nation

Sentencing Project

An editorial reports that “With 2.2 million people behind bars — a staggering 500 percent increase over the past 30 years — the United States has become the world’s leading jailer. Nearly 5 million more people are on probation or parole. One of every 31 American adults is under the control of the criminal justice system.

“More hopefully, the Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported that the U.S. prison population in 2012 declined slightly, for the third straight year. The nation’s race to incarcerate has finally slowed, but broader sentencing reforms and policy changes are needed to bring prison populations back to rational and sustainable levels.

“At the current rate, it would take 88 years for the U.S. prison population to return to its 1980 level, according to a report from The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group. Economically and socially, the country can’t afford to wait.

“Nearly half of state prison inmates in 2011 were convicted of nonviolent drug, property, or public-order crimes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The nation needs, among other things, sweeping sentencing reforms, shorter but more intense prison stays for many probation and parole violators, and opportunities for parole for the growing number of aging and sick inmates

“Across the country, prison counts rose every year between 1973 and 2010. Those spikes were driven by policy changes — not crime rates — including harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, so-called three-strikes laws, and other get-tough-on-crime measures.

“In recent years, a growing number of activists, policy makers, and politicians — including budget-conscious conservatives and right-leaning libertarians — have questioned the nation’s prison-building boom. Prisons have become big business, costing the nation an estimated $75 billion a year.

“Mass incarceration has severed community social networks, especially in poor neighborhoods, left one in 14 African-American children with a parent in prison, and created lifelong employment barriers for the 95 percent of prisoners who eventually go home.

“Nearly 700,000 people a year leave U.S. prisons, often unprepared for life on the outside.

“The United States appears to be ending an insidious, costly incarceration spree. Right-sizing prison populations in states such as Ohio will take courage and foresight, but the alternative is wasting billions more dollars that would be better spent on education, health care, transportation, and other vital needs.”