"Can We Wait 60 Years to Cut the Prison Population in Half?"

The question in the title of this post is the title of this new publication authored by The Sentencing Project's Senior Research Analyst Nazgol Ghandnoosh.  Here is how it gets started:

The U.S. prison population declined 11% in 10 years after reaching an all-time high in 2009.  This modest reduction follows a nearly 700% increase in the prison population between 1972 and 2009.  As of year end 2019, 1.4 million people were in U.S. prisons; an imprisonment rate unmatched worldwide.  At the recent pace of decarceration, it will take nearly six decades to cut the U.S. prison population in half.

This analysis is based on the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on people serving sentences greater than one year.  Since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, a number of states and the federal system have made additional, albeit limited, reductions in their prison populations.  This analysis underscores the need to reduce unnecessarily high levels of imprisonment amidst a public health crisis and going forward.  Meaningful decarceration, as explained below, requires reducing excessive prison terms for violent convictions.