Reducing Mass Incarceration: Implications of the Iron Law of Prison Populations
Thursday, 15 October 2009
by TODD R. CLEAR and JAMES AUSTIN
Beginning in the 1970s, the United States embarked on a three-decade long shift in its penal policies. In these years, state and federal governments tripled the percentage of convicted felons sentenced to confinement and doubled the length of their sentences. As a consequence of these changes, punishment in the United States has become an outlier, not only among prevailing practices in the Western world, but also in comparison to the United States’ own long-standing practices. United States imprisonment rates are now almost five times higher than the historical norm prevailing throughout most of the twentieth century, and they are three to five times higher than in other Western democracies.
