The Golden Anniversary of Mass Incarceration in America

Admitting Offenses

Approximately 60% of the US incarcerated population resides in state prisons, 12% in federal prisons, and 29% in local jails (Kang-Brown et al., 2021). By the end of 2021, the number of those incarcerated in state prisons, federal prisons, and local jails was approximately 1 million, 157,000, and 640,000, respectively. In state prisons, the majority of inmates (63%) were admitted for violent offenses, followed by drug offenses (13%), property offenses (13%), and public order offenses (11%). In federal prisons, 47% of inmates were admitted for drug offenses, followed by public order offenses (42%), violent offenses (7%), and property offenses (4%) (Carson, 2023a; Sawyer & Wagner, 2023). Prison sentences for drug offenses represent a comparatively low percentage of recent state prison admissions. Still, convictions for drug offenses helped fuel the growth of state and federal prison populations over the past 50 years of mass incarceration, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s (Pfaff, 2015).

Admission offense data can, however, be problematic or misleading for several reasons (Sawyer & Wagner, 2023). For example, although inmates might be convicted of multiple crimes (e.g., violent and drug crimes), prison admission data indicate only the most serious crime committed in the episode that led to conviction and attendant admission to prison (Langan & Levin, 2002). Prison admission data also are confounded because the crimes charged match neither the actual crimes committed nor the conviction offense, which is frequently the product of a plea-bargaining arrangement or particular state laws, such as the felony murder rule or doctrine, requiring that all offenders (i.e., including accomplices or coconspirators) present during the commission of murder be charged with murder regardless of their direct participation in the homicide (Binder, 2005). Furthermore, offenses categorized as violent might involve no physical harm to the victims. For example, some state and federal statutes on “violent crimes” encompass stealing drugs, burglarizing residences in the evening, snatching a purse, and manufacturing methamphetamines (Sawyer & Wagner, 2023). A prison record for a violent crime can be particularly harmful to formerly incarcerated individuals’ lives (Pager, 2007).

Race, Gender, Age, and Income Disparities

Burgeoning Prison Populations

The United States comprises only 5% of the world's population but nearly 25% percent of the world's prisoners (Walmsley, 2015). Incarceration rates in the United States began to rise at unprecedented rates starting in 1973 (Travis et al., 2014). Between 1980 and 2010, the 222% increase in the incarceration rate in state prisons was a function of policy changes, not crime rates (Sentencing Project, 2020). In 2023, more than 2 million adults were incarcerated in the United States, the most significant number of inmates in any country, equal to the sixth-highest incarceration rate worldwide per 100,000 (531per capita), behind El Salvador (1,086 per capita), Cuba (794 per capita), Rwanda (637 per capita), Turkmenistan (576 per capita), and American Samoa (538 per capita), but eclipsing countries such as Italy (102 per capita), the United Kingdom (96 per capita), Canada (89 per capita), and Germany (67 per capita) (Robertson, 2019; World Prison Brief, 2023).

From 1950 to 1972, the U.S. prison population climbed by 18%; from 1972 to 2009, it grew by 700%, reaching 1.6 million. In 1974, the country's imprisonment rate was 102 per 100,000. By the turn of the century, the rate had quadrupled, reaching 138 in 1980, 295 in 1990, and 470 in 2000. By 2007, the imprisonment rate peaked at 506 (Kaeble & Cowhig, 2016). After the inmate population jumped precipitously throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, it began to shrink in 2009 and plunged significantly again in 2019, representing a decarceration rate of 2.3% annually over the past 15 years (Carson, 2023a).

Due to state legislative and other reforms, the prison population has declined by roughly 20% since 2009. Specifically, since 2009––in states including New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut––the prison population has declined by 50% or more. In more than two dozen other states, it has fallen by 25% or more (Carson, 2023a; Eisen & Chettiar, 2015). The population declined by nearly 30% in the federal prison system, but before it ever decreased, the U.S. prison population soared beyond all expectations. Consequently, “even at the current rate of decline, it will take decades to achieve incarceration rates appropriate to the current violent crime rate, roughly where it was in 1971”(Cullen, 2018, p. 4). Indeed, at this pace of decline, it would take nearly 75 years to return to the 1985 incarceration rate of 200 per 100,000 (Austin et al., 2016).

Getting Tough on Crime

The sentencing policies that have led to the imprisonment binge were highly punitive, aimed disproportionately at underrepresented minorities, and were not based on a public safety rationale. In response to historic escalations in crime and social disorder in urban America, which began in the 1960s, crime became politicized at the federal level. Subsequently, politicians from both major parties at all levels fought to outdo each other with increasingly harsh and punitive rhetoric laden with thinly veiled racism. The research on “what works” regarding rehabilitative programming was replaced with a powerful meme of “nothing works.”Albeit based on misrepresenting findings from flawed studies, the birthing of a punitive correctional culture affected policies and practices for five decades and still reverberates throughout society (Clear, 2009).

Steep rises in crime rates from the 1960s until the early 1990s, atmosphere particularly in homicides, angered and frightened Americans, engendering a “populist punitive” atmosphere (Bottoms, 1995, p. 48) or “penal populism” (Pratt, 2007, p. 5). Policymakers and practitioners responded to public demands for swift and severe action. The national political discourse in the early 1990s strongly encouraged harsher punishments for violent and drug offenders. Members of Congress of both parties advocated for the removal of such offenders from the streets and incarcerating them for extended terms by “locking them up and throwing away the key” (Bennett et al., 1996; Ruth & Reitz, 2003; Zimring & Hawkins, 1999).

Terms such as “superpredators” –– coined by academics but used by politicians mainly to evoke fear of young Black men––were used to support the view that more imprisonment and longer sentences were essential to improve public safety. Thus, instead of effective and fair criminal justice practices, laws and sentencing structures became a means of achieving political and other ends, such as to wage culture wars, win elections, and deny that the United States had grown more multiethnic and multiracial (Tonry, 2014). Consequently, prison sentence lengths in the United States became extraordinarily long compared with those in other Western countries (Travis et al., 2014).

During the 1980s, the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures enacted laws mandating lengthy prison sentences—often 20 years or longer—for drug offenses, violent offenses, and “career criminals.”For example, 26 states and the federal government adopted “three strikes and you’re out” statutes by 2004, which dictated a sentence of 20 years to life for a third felony conviction, in which a minimum of 20 years had to be served before an inmate became eligible for parole (Tonry & Western, 2014).

In the 1990s, Congress and more than half of the states enacted “three strikes” laws that mandated minimum sentences of 25 years or longer for affected offenders. Most states also enacted “truth-in-sentencing” laws that required identified offenders to serve at least 85%of their nominal prison sentences. Congress passed a federal version in 1984 (Turner et al., 2006). Mandatory prison sentences intensified enforcement of drug laws, and long sentences contributed to overall high rates of incarceration, particularly in Black and Hispanic communities. Indeed, strengthened enforcement of drug laws subjected Black Americans, more than White Americans, to new mandatory minimum sentences—despite lower levels of drug use and no higher comparative levels of drug trafficking and sales between Black Americans and White Americans (Roberts, 2004). Studies have found that three-strikes laws did little to decrease serious crime or petty theft rates below those indicated by preexisting trends (Stolzenberg & D’Alessio, 1997).

The 1994 Crime Bill afforded state funding that perpetuated policies favoring mass incarceration (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, H.R. 3355). Specifically, the Crime Bill appropriated $3 billion in funding for grant programs to expand prison capacity by creating the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing (VOI/TIS) Incentive Grant Program. The funding supported the construction of facilities for some 50,000 new prison beds, representing nearly 4% of state prison capacity, and aimed at incarcerating people convicted of violent offenses (Ditton & Wilson, 1999). Between 1992 and 2003, the passage of VOI/TIS resulted in an 83% increase in inmates serving life sentences (Owens, 2011).

VOI/TIS was predicated on two crime-control notions: first, that a large gap between imposed sentences and actual time served undermined imprisonment's deterrent effects, and second, that actual time served for violent offenders was not long enough to punish or incapacitate offenders adequately (Sabol et al., 2019). From the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, state sentencing reforms focused on increasing the certainty and severity of sentencing. Thus, many states had adopted such reforms before or soon after the Crime Bill was passed (Travis et al., 2014). National rhetoric likely convinced lawmakers to embrace

As noted above, changes in state prison populations before and shortly after the passage of the Crime Bill indicate that most states had already begun implementing more severe sentencing laws that increased both prison admissions and prison sentence lengths (Owens, 2011). By the time the Crime Bill and its grant programs were passed, these state reforms had already begun to exert highly significant effects on prison population growth and prison time served by those incarcerated for violent crimes (Zhang et al., 2009).

In 2010, Congress amended the 100-to-1crack cocaine sentencing law to reduce the differential to a still indefensible 18-to-1, which nonetheless continued to produce unjustifiable racial disparities. Similarly, the New York Legislature in 2004 and 2009 amended the Rockefeller Drug Laws but left many severe provisions in place (Tonry, 2014). States have slowly repealed three strikes, truth-in-sentencing, and life-without-possibility-of-parole laws (Travis et al., 2014). Most changes to mandatory minimum sentence laws created exceptions that only slightly narrowed their scope or allowed earlier eligibility for parole release for nonviolent first offenders (Austin et al., 2013). However, as Hamilton (2023, p. 890) stated:

Times have… changed. To adopt the “heat metaphor” employed by Loader and Sparks (2010), the politics of crime have “cooled” considerably since the “law and order” crime control climate of the 1990s and early 2000s (Bell, 2018). However, it is undeniable that crime retains its close relationship with politics and political actors, not least through the traditionally privileged position that “law and order” play in a conservative/right-wing understanding of reality (Loader, 2020).

The harsh sentencing paradigm was mainly a political reaction to rising crime and was impervious to empirical findings. These policies’ purported rationale was to protect the public, but the data indicated otherwise (Durose et al., 2015). Moreover, the policies were inequitable, placing a disproportionate burden on communities of color (Eaglin & Solomon, 2013).

The War on Drugs

In President Nixon's vision of America, drug use was rampant in 1971 because drug users were law-breaking hedonists who deserved only discipline and punishment. This appealed to his conservative base and eschewed Democratic notions of the root causes of crime and addiction, which arose from social inequality, inadequate school systems, structural racism, and the lack of prospects for upward mobility among the underclass (Dufton, 2012). Thus, the “Law and Order President” was compelled to declare a “War on Drugs.”His anti-drug ideology was grounded in conceptions of personal responsibility and moral failings and relied on prescribed punishments as the best corrective.

By distorting statistics and peddling fear within the middle class (dubbed “the silent majority” at the time), the Nixon administration created an explicit connection between violent crime and addiction, “shifting the conversation away from eradicating the causes of crime and focusing solely on punishing the criminal [qua addict]”(Dufton, 2012, p. 3). The Nixonian argument posited that the violent threat that drug users posed necessitated imprisonment for their own good and the safety and protection of law-abiding Americans (Dufton, 2012). President Reagan (and GHW Bush) doubled down on Nixon's War on Drugs with the passage of the Omnibus Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 (Tonry, 1995).

One of the most important causes of the explosive rise in the nation's prison population was the unprecedented upsurge in the number of people convicted of drug offenses (Alexander, 2020; Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1994;Neyfakh, 2015; Roberts, 2004;Rothwell, 2015; Tonry, 1995). In 1980, 19,000 inmates, or 6% of all inmates, were imprisoned for drug offenses. In 1999, 251,200 inmates, or 20% of all inmates, were sent to prison for drug offenses—an astounding increase of 1,222%. From 1980 to 1999, the number of drug offenders admitted to prison rose tenfold, from 15 to 150 inmates per 100,000 Americans (Blumstein & Beck, 1999; Human Rights Watch, 2000).

Between 1985 and 2000, approximately 10 percent, or 31 million, Americans were arrested for drug law violations (Alexander, 2020). An arrested suspect's chances of being sentenced to prison for a drug offense charge increased by 447% from 1980 to 1992 (Beck & Gilliard, 1995). The number of drug offenders in prison rose 478% between 1985 and 1995, compared with an increase of 119% in the overall size of the prison population during those years (Mumola & Beck, 1997). Between 1990 and 1999, the number of drug offenders in prison increased by more than 100,000, accounting for 20% of the total growth in the prison population. Between 1995 and 2003, the number of people incarcerated for a drug crime accounted for the most significant percentage change in the nation's prison population (up 49%) (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005).

The majority of drug offenders admitted to prison in the 1990s were convicted of low-level drug possession or sales. Relatively few were convicted of high-level sales or drug trafficking, and most had no previous convictions for violent offenses (Sabol & Lynch, 1997). In 2001, the number of offenders admitted to prison for drug offenses (251,000) exceeded the number of those sentenced for property (238,500) and public order crimes (124,600) (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002). Moreover, the percentage of women convicted of drug offenses had surpassed that of men. For example, between 1990 and 1996, the number of women convicted of drug offenses increased by 37%, whereas the number of men sentenced increased by 25% (Greenfeld & Snell, 1999). Surprisingly, more people are behind bars for drug offenses today than were incarcerated for any crime in 1980 (Sentencing Project, 2023).

The presumption that drug law convictions have driven the growth of prison admissions during mass incarceration has since been challenged. For example, the percentage of prison admissions for drug offenses peaked at 22% in 1990. In reality, all types of crime were pursued aggressively in terms of arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment, and all contributed to mass incarceration. Specifically, admissions for violent and property crimes accounted for 67% of the growth in prison populations during the imprisonment binge. However, arrests and convictions for drug crimes could have affected the prison population's growth indirectly by disrupting offenders’ lives, leading to future incarcerable criminal behaviors and amassing criminal records, which could have increased punishments for subsequent convictions and rendered prison a more likely sanction (Pfaff, 2015). In short, mitigating the War on Drugs might have had little overall impact on the prison population. Nonetheless, it might have reduced racial disproportionality in imprisonment and mere exposure to prison, both of which are pernicious in themselves (Rothwell, 2015).

Imprisonment's Collateral Damage

The collateral damage from being convicted and incarcerated, particularly for a “violent” crime, is multifaceted, and such convictions affect the likelihood of future involvement at all stages of the criminal justice process, including reincarceration (Clear, 2009). Imprisonment can permanently damage individuals’, families, and communities’ lives (Nellis, 2021). Incarceration bankrupts futures, and prison sentences interfere with education and employment, reducing lifetime earnings and dampening career aspirations (Holzer, 2009). Imprisonment also weakens community ties, destabilizes families, and leaves children with inadequate parenting and supervision. It also creates obstacles to building a productive future and meeting the milestones of adulthood (Raphael, 2007). The people at the most significant risk for incarceration (i.e., underclass minorities) are already disadvantaged, and imprisonment pushes them even further behind by creating irremediable setbacks (Clear, 2009).

Throughout the imprisonment binge and beyond, the formerly incarcerated have been disenfranchised, stigmatized, and discriminated against when seeking housing, jobs, and government benefits. Imprisonment also reduces lifetime earnings and deleteriously affects life outcomes among the children of incarcerated parents, perpetuating the cycle of intergenerational poverty, marginalization, and criminal trajectories (Pager, 2007; Wildman et al., 2018). High imprisonment levels in communities cause high levels of neighborhood crime, disorder, decline, and deterioration, further widening already significant social and economic disparities. Furthermore, Black Americans have shouldered the criminogenic burden of the imprisonment cycle more than any other demographic group (Nellis, 2023).

Additionally, mass incarceration's impact on the children of imprisoned parents during this period has created greater instability in youths’ lives. For example, it has increased the likelihood that they will underachieve in school and the job market and participate in criminal activity (Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999). Incarceration's onerous consequences on poor communities of color have resulted in the transfer of critical political and economic resources from these communities to those where prisons have been built and operated. Moreover, the widespread incarceration of young African American men has removed human and social capital from communities, thereby reducing informal social control in neighborhoods that could little afford these losses (Lynch & Sobel, 2004).

Imprisonment's effect on family stability, neighborhood cohesion, and employment during the mass incarceration era might have increased crime rates in some communities by squandering human and social capital and reducing collective efficacy (Clear, 2001). Imprisonment also has led to fewer African American fathers being available to raise their children, more single-mother households, economic strain, family instability, and attenuated social networks (Braman, 2002). The steady rise in the number of African American women incarcerated for drug offenses has also had a devastating impact on family stability and well-being in the African American community (Bloom & Steinhart, 1993).

Following a parent's incarceration, children are more likely to engage in illegal or antisocial behaviors and to reject participation in normative social institutions (e.g., school) (Braman, 2002). For impoverished youths, parental imprisonment, combined with other adverse life experiences, can produce long-term changes in their trajectories, including the “intergenerational transmission of the risk of imprisonment” (Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999, p. 146). Children with incarcerated mothers are six times likelier than their peers to become incarcerated (Johnston, 1995). These consequences persisted long after the US prison population crested (Travis et al., 2014).

Enacting Federal Programming

The federal government has fueled mass incarceration by incentivizing states to lock up more offenders with the promise of funding for justice-related initiatives (e.g., Byrne Justice Assistance grants and Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act funds) (Stroud et al., 2023). In the previous decade, federal dollars were harnessed to reverse the swelling of the prison population with mixed outcomes (Crowley & Pearl, 2020). For example, the Department of Justice's Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) was funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance with supplementary grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts and Arnold Ventures and technical assistance from the Council of State Governments Justice Center and the Crime and Justice Institute (Harvell et al., 2021).

One of the principal goals of JRI was to reduce state prison populations. States were allowed to decide how to spend the dollars to “achieve public safety goals.” More than 40 states have received JRI funding (United States Department of Justice, 2018). However, the results regarding reducing the prison population have been spotty. For example, the number of inmates in Kentucky's prisons swelled with the infusion of JRI monies (Carson & Sabol, 2012). Moreover, during the Trump administration, the JRI's attention pivoted toward anti-crime and recidivism and away from prison reduction efforts (Sabol & Baumann, 2020).

As a component of its 2023 budget proposal, the Biden administration introduced the Accelerated Justice System Reform (AJSR) grant program, which allocated $15B to fund crime prevention and public safety efforts, incorporating elements aimed at reducing imprisonment directly and indirectly (US Department of Justice, 2021). Building on the AJSR program, the Brennan Center has introduced the Prison Safety and Prison Reduction Act, which promises a marked decline in the prison population—a return to the incarceration rates of the 1970s and 1980s—through numerous policy strategies, some of which I touch on in the discussion below (Stroud et al., 2023).

Reducing the Stock and Flow

Benchmarks for Progress

The recent declines in the prison population are heartening and hopeful signs that a more rational and fairer correctional system is on the horizon. The aspirational benchmark would be a return to 1970s levels of incarceration, which had achieved a steady state before crime and punishment became politicized. This would require an 85% drop in the prison population (Bellin, 2023). Throughout this article, I have noted that the insinuation of the federal law enforcement apparatus into state correctional operations led to mass incarceration, including the prosecution of the war on drugs, the enactment of harsh sentencing laws, and the mindless pursuit of parole and probation revocations (Bellin, 2023). These changes, which began in 1970, should be systematically reviewed and deconstructed by panels of experts who rely on scientific evidence to support their recommended reforms (Barlow, 2019).

In conclusion, the mass incarceration era should be placed in the dustbin that holds our nation's domestic policy failures. The brunt of these failures has been borne by Black and Hispanic Americans, among other predominantly poor U.S. residents, who have long suffered from punitive crime and drug control policies (Reiman & Leighton, 2016). The root causes of addiction and violence can be more effectively addressed through treatment and harm-reduction strategies. The selective use of imprisonment is necessary to maintain civility and security in a free society. Nevertheless, the public must become better educated about their communities’ levels of crime and violence. Perceptions of crime and fear of crime have never squared with the reality of the risk of being a victim of crime (Manning et al., 2022). Throughout the past 50 years, fear-mongering politicians and rating-hungry media outlets have ensured that Americans came to view imprisonment as a necessary and protective mechanism instead of as a costly, overused, and oppressive one.