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Reports by the Prison Policy Initiative on justice reform topics (mass incarceration, bail, sentencing, etc)

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Fact sheet versions of some of Prison Policy Initiative reports ready for redistribution

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Campaign Zero is a comprehensive platform of policy solutions to end police violence in America.

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The need for criminal justice reform in America - Panel discussion

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The Formerly Incarcerated Fighting for Criminal Justice Reform

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The police make 10.5 million arrests a year, mostly for minor offenses. In fact, less than 5 percent were for incidents that involved serious violence. Every police encounter threatens escalation, injury, and death. Real accountability in policing is long overdue. Vera is committed to dismantling the current culture of policing and working toward s ...

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What Policing Costs: A Look at Spending in America's Biggest Cities

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The police make 10.5 million arrests a year, mostly for minor offenses. In fact, less than 5 percent were for incidents that involved serious violence. Every police encounter threatens escalation, injury, and death. Real accountability in policing is long overdue. Vera is committed to dismantling the current culture of policing and working toward s ...

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The United States is the world's leader in incarceration. Get the facts and statistics on trends in U.S. incarceration.

Sorry, prison population data is not available for this jurisdiction. Please choose another.

Research at The Sentencing Project

Explore the data

The support of The Sentencing Project has been integral in informing our community of the racial disparities that exist in Iowa. Their research added credibility to local organizers' approaches and forced the community to shift its focus from detention toward the bigger picture- racial inequity.

Iowa Organizer and Youth Justice Advocate

Research at The Sentencing Project

Our criminal legal system is broken

For over three decades, The Sentencing Project's research and analysis has served as the backbone of successful national and state criminal legal reform campaigns. Join us in speaking out against the racist policies that underpin our penal system and advocate with us for meaningful solutions to advance public safety.

Take action

1 in 7

people in U.S. prisons are serving a life sentence.

4X

Black youth are over four times as likely to be detained or committed in juvenile facilities as their white peers.

In 2019, over half of the people in U.S. prisons - amounting to more than 770,000 people - were serving sentences of 10 years or longer - a huge jump from 2000.

Support our critical work

The Sentencing Project and our advocacy partners rely on generous supporters like you for the resources to launch urgently needed research, advocacy, and public education efforts.

Donate now to make a difference

Sorry, prison population data is not available for this jurisdiction. Please choose another.

Research at The Sentencing Project

Explore the data

The support of The Sentencing Project has been integral in informing our community of the racial disparities that exist in Iowa. Their research added credibility to local organizers' approaches and forced the community to shift its focus from detention toward the bigger picture- racial inequity.

Iowa Organizer and Youth Justice Advocate

Research at The Sentencing Project

Our criminal legal system is broken

For over three decades, The Sentencing Project's research and analysis has served as the backbone of successful national and state criminal legal reform campaigns. Join us in speaking out against the racist policies that underpin our penal system and advocate with us for meaningful solutions to advance public safety.

Take action

1 in 7

people in U.S. prisons are serving a life sentence.

4X

Black youth are over four times as likely to be detained or committed in juvenile facilities as their white peers.

1 in 7

people in U.S. prisons are serving a life sentence.

4X

Black youth are over four times as likely to be detained or committed in juvenile facilities as their white peers.

In 2019, over half of the people in U.S. prisons - amounting to more than 770,000 people - were serving sentences of 10 years or longer - a huge jump from 2000.

In 2019, over half of the people in U.S. prisons - amounting to more than 770,000 people - were serving sentences of 10 years or longer - a huge jump from 2000.

Support our critical work

The Sentencing Project and our advocacy partners rely on generous supporters like you for the resources to launch urgently needed research, advocacy, and public education efforts.

Donate now to make a difference

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Research - Get the Facts - The Sentencing Project

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The United States is the world's leader in incarceration. Get the facts and statistics on trends in U.S. incarceration. Research at The Sentencing Project The support of The Sentencing Project has been integral in informing our community of the racial disparities that exist in Iowa.

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The Missing Data in Criminal Justice Reform

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Last fall, I wrote about a young man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He had been arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he insisted he had not committed. Then he spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times. Once, in February, 2012, he ripped his bedsheet into strips, tied them together to create a noose, and tried to hang himself from the light fixture in his cell.

In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a bannister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital, not far from his home, in the Bronx. When I met him, in the spring of 2014, he appeared to be more stable.

Then, late last year, about two months after my story about him appeared, he stopped going to classes at Bronx Community College. During the week of Christmas, he was confined in the psych ward at Harlem Hospital. One day after his release, he was hospitalized again, this time back at St. Barnabas. When I visited him there on January 9th, he did not seem like himself. He was gaunt, restless, and deeply paranoid. He had recently thrown out his brand-new television, he explained, "because it was watching me."

After two weeks at St. Barnabas, Browder was released and sent back home. The next day, his lawyer, Paul V. Prestia, got a call from an official at Bronx Community College. An anonymous donor (who had likely read the New Yorker story) had offered to pay his tuition for the semester. This happy news prompted Browder to reënroll. For the next few months he seemed to thrive. He rode his bicycle back and forth to school every day, he no longer got panic attacks sitting in a classroom, and he earned better grades than he had the prior semester.

Ever since I'd met him, Browder had been telling me stories about having been abused by officers and inmates on Rikers. The stories were disturbing, but I did not fully appreciate what he had experienced until this past April when I obtained surveillance footage of an officer assaulting him and of a large group of inmates pummeling and kicking him. I sat next to Kalief while he watched these videos for the first time. Afterward, we discussed whether they should be published on The New Yorker' s Web site. I told him that it was his decision. He said to put them online.

He was driven by the same motive that led him to talk to me for the first time, a year earlier. He wanted the public to know what he had gone through, so that nobody else would have to endure the same ordeals. His willingness to tell his story publicly-and his ability to recount it with great insight-ultimately helped persuade Mayor Bill de Blasio to try to reform the city's court system and end the sort of excessive delays that kept him in jail for so long.

Browder's story also caught the attention of Rand Paul, who began talking about him on the campaign trail. Jay Z met with Browder after watching the videos. Rosie O'Donnell invited him on "The View" last year and recently had him over for dinner. Browder could be a very private person, and he told almost nobody about meeting O'Donnell or Jay Z. However, in a picture taken of him with Jay Z, who draped an arm around his shoulders, Browder looked euphoric.

Last Monday, Prestia, who had filed a lawsuit on Browder's behalf against the city, noticed that Browder had put up a couple of odd posts on Facebook. When Prestia sent him a text message, asking what was going on, Browder insisted he was O.K. "Are you sure everything is cool?" Prestia wrote. Browder replied: "Yea I'm alright thanks man." The two spoke on Wednesday, and Browder did seem fine. On Saturday afternoon, Prestia got a call from Browder's mother: he had committed suicide.

That night, Prestia and I visited the family's home in the Bronx. Fifteen relatives-aunts, uncles, cousins-sat crammed together in the front room with his parents and siblings. The mood was alternately depressed, angry, and confused. Two empty bottles of Browder's antipsychotic drug sat on a table. Was it possible that taking the drug had caused him to commit suicide? Or could he have stopped taking it and become suicidal as a result?

His relatives recounted stories he'd told them about being starved and beaten by guards on Rikers. They spoke about his paranoia, about how he often suspected that the cops or some other authority figures were after him. His mother explained that the night before he told her, "Ma, I can't take it anymore." "Kalief, you've got a lot of people in your corner," she told him.

One cousin recalled that when Browder first got home from jail, he would walk to G.E.D. prep class every day, almost an hour each way. Another cousin remembered seeing him seated by the kitchen each morning with his schoolwork spread out before him.

His parents showed me his bedroom on the second floor. Next to his bed was his MacBook Air. (Rosie O'Donnell had given it to him.) A bicycle stood by the closet. There were two holes near the door, which he had made with his fist some months earlier. Mustard-yellow sheets covered his bed. And, to the side of the room, atop a jumble of clothes, there were two mustard-yellow strips that he had evidently torn from his bedsheets.

As his father explained, he'd apparently decided that these torn strips of sheet were not strong enough. That afternoon, at about 12:15 P.M., he went into another bedroom, pulled out the air conditioner, and pushed himself out through the hole in the wall, feet first, with a cord wrapped around his neck*. His mother was the only other person home at the time. After she heard a loud thumping noise, she went upstairs to investigate, but couldn't figure out what had happened. It wasn't until she went outside to the backyard and looked up that she realized that her youngest child had hanged himself.

That evening, in a room packed with family members, Prestia said, "This case is bigger than Michael Brown!" In that case, in which a police officer shot Brown, an unarmed teen-ager, in Ferguson, Missouri, Prestia recalled that there were conflicting stories about what happened. And the incident took, he said, "one minute in time." In the case of Kalief Browder, he said, "When you go over the three years that he spent [in jail] and all the horrific details he endured, it's unbelievable that this could happen to a teen-ager in New York City. He didn't get tortured in some prison camp in another country. It was right here!"

* Browder's mother later explained that the cord was made from his bedsheets.

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Browder, who endured three years on Rikers Island without a trial, committed suicide on Saturday. Jennifer Gonnerman reports.

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In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Like many who are now incarcerated, I was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. I got lucky, but because of dysfunctional, discriminatory rules, most don't.

Video

Back

transcript

Meek Mill: Prisoners Deserve a New Set of Rights

The criminal justice system has a set of rights created to protect you. But is it really protecting us? The rapper Meek Mill explains the urgent need for criminal justice reform.

The criminal justice system has a set of rights created to protect you. But do you think it's really protecting us? You had a right to remain silent, but that really means you had a right to be silenced, doubted, interrogated, suspected. The color of your skin can and will be used against you in a court of law. In their hands, we're incarcerated five times more often than white people convicted for the same crimes. You have a right to an attorney during questioning. And in some states, 80 percent of criminal defendants can't even afford a attorney, so an overworked public defender controls your fate - one government employee, countless lives at stake. You had a right to be innocent until proven guilty. But somehow, about 47 percent of the wrongly convicted are black. And if they do prove you're guilty, they're going to write you a run-on sentence, on average 20 percent longer than white defendants accused of the same crime. Even if you get out, you're still not free. When you're an ex-con, they had a right to deny you a bank account, deny you a mortgage, deny you a job, deny your vote. And if you don't remain perfect, with the smallest slip-up, smallest infraction, the most honest mistake, you're going to join us, the 80 percent who come back to prison within five years, as I did. That's when you realize, they didn't bring us here to thrive. They brought us here to build this. The plantation and a prison are actually no different. The past is the present. It ain't no coincidence. This was the plan since abolition, to keep us subjugated by creating this system. But I believe in a different set of rights, the right to stand up and be heard, the right to reform a broken justice system and build a new future. We had the right to be silent. Now it's our right to speak up. Do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?

The criminal justice system has a set of rights created to protect you. But is it really protecting us? The rapper Meek Mill explains the urgent need for criminal justice reform. Credit Credit... Boaz Freund

Watch the video above by the rapper Meek Mill on the urgent need to reform the criminal justice system.
I'm blessed - I'm busy recording an album and catching up with friends and fans as my family and I make plans to celebrate the holidays. It's a far cry from last year, when the season passed with me behind bars. I send my prayers to all those who are still in the web of the system: Please know you are not forgotten.

Like many who are currently incarcerated, I was the victim of a miscarriage of justice - carried out by an untruthful officer, as determined by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office, and an unfair judge.

My crime? Popping a wheelie on a motorcycle in Manhattan. Even though the charge was dismissed in a New York City court, a Philadelphia-based judge still deemed my interaction with the police to be a technical violation of my probation - stemming from a 2007 arrest - and sentenced me to two to four years in prison despite the fact that I didn't commit a crime. The judge also refused my motion for bail, calling me a "danger to the community" and a "flight risk."

The ordeal cost me my most precious commodity: my freedom. I served five months. With the help of friends and the intervention of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, I was released on bail this past April and was able to resume my life.

But I know I'm the exception to the rule - a lucky one. It's clearer than ever that a disproportionate number of men and women of color are treated unfairly by a broken criminal justice system. The system causes a vicious cycle, feeding upon itself - sons and daughters grow up with their parents in and out of prison, and then become far more likely to become tied up in the arrest-jail-probation cycle. This is bad for families and our society as a whole.

We, as a free and democratic society, must do better. Since my release, I've had the opportunity to meet with several lawmakers such as Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, and I'm determined to use my platform to help those without the resources to make their voices heard.

We all need to hold our lawmakers accountable for supporting unfair or inhumane policies and all practices that perpetuate injustice, especially for the blacks and Latinos who fall prey to them most frequently. The reality is African-Americans and Latinos who come from poverty-stricken neighborhoods are assigned public defenders too overburdened to do anything in most cases other than negotiate the most favorable plea deal, regardless of guilt or innocence.

Soon, some friends and I will be announcing a foundation dedicated to achieving real change. In the meantime, if you're interested in joining us and lending your support to solving what is the moral crisis of our time, please visit www.reformnow.com and sign up.

Together, we will demand stronger prison rehabilitation programs, updated probation policies - including shortened probationary periods - an improved bail system and balanced sentencing structures.

It's a shame that model probationers can be immediately put back behind bars simply for missing curfew, testing positive for marijuana, failing to pay fines on time or, in some cases, not following protocol when changing addresses. Our lawmakers can and should do away with these "technical violations."

And more broadly, if they're serious about reducing mass incarceration and unnecessary government surveillance, they should introduce legislation that allows people on probation to earn a reduction in probation time for good behavior so that entire swaths of people aren't spending the majority of their adult lives on probation as I did.

The money saved from imprisoning fewer people could then be used for employment programs and mental health counseling that would equip the formerly incarcerated with the tools for reintegration into society.

Above all, we need to make sure punishments actually fit crimes. Mine certainly didn't. But I am choosing to see my situation in a different light, to see that I'm incredibly fortunate. A higher power has put me in a position to help fix this - to help clean up this persistent stain on our society.

Meek Mill (@MeekMill) is a multiplatinum hip-hop artist and an advocate of criminal justice reform.

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Opinion | Meek Mill: Prisoners Need a New Set of Rights (Published 2018)

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Like many who are now incarcerated, I was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. I got lucky, but because of dysfunctional, discriminatory rules, most don't. Watch the video above by the rapper Meek Mill on the urgent need to reform the criminal justice system.

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Facts And Research

What is the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC)?

DPIC is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment. The Center was founded in 1990 and prepares in-depth reports, issues press releases, conducts briefings for journalists, and serves as a resource to those working on this issue. The Center is widely quoted and consulted by all those concerned with the death penalty.

What is DPIC's stance on the death penalty?

The Death Penalty Information Center does not have a position on the death penalty in the abstract. We do not address the death penalty as a moral issue. Instead, we try to educate the public about how the death penalty works in practice. We have been critical through our research and reports of various aspects of the death penalty in the United States.

Does DPIC grant interviews?

Although we cannot respond to student requests for opinions and views, we do have a comprehensive collection of factual information on our Web site. If there is specific information you cannot find, please e-mail us.

How do I cite information from DPIC's Web site in my research?

Unless otherwise noted, the "Death Penalty Information Center" can be considered the author of the information or quote used. In almost all cases, a source and date are given for information on our Web site. If no source is listed, then the information can be attributed to the Death Penalty Information Center. Most charts and graphs were created by DPIC, sometimes using outside information, and can be attributed to DPIC. If you need more information about our staff see Staff and Board of Directors.

Arbitrariness

Does the death penalty punish the worst of the worst offenders? How are cases chosen for death penalty prosecution? Is someone more likely to get the death penalty because of their race or gender? Does the use of the death penalty vary by county or city?

Arbitrariness by DPIC

DPIC Podcasts Episode One: Arbitrariness

"The Death Penalty is Arbitrary and Unfair" by Amnesty International

R. Smith, "As arbitrary as ever," Second Class Justice, October 17, 2010 (DPIC Summary)

ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Report, September 2007 (DPIC Summary)

American Civil Liberties Union, "Scattered Justice: Geographic Disparities of the Death Penalty," March 5, 2004

J. Blume, T. Eisenberg, and M. Wells, "Explaining Death Row's Population and Racial Composition," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Volume 1, Issue 1, 165-207, March 2004

S. Gross, "Still Unfair, Still Arbitrary - But Do We Care?, Keynote Address," 26 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 517 (2000)

B. Steiner, "Still Arbitrary: Capital Sentencing in the Post-Furman Era," 10 Crim. Just. Policy Rev. 85 (1999)

M. Burkhead & J. Luginbuhl, "Sources of Bias and Arbitrariness In The Capital Trial," 50 J. Soc. Issues 103 (1994)

Costs

Does execution or life imprisonment cost more? Does it cost more per day to keep a person on death row than in a regular cell?

Costs of the Death Penalty by DPIC

Millions Misspent: What Politicians Don't Say About the High Costs of the Death Penalty by DPIC

DPIC Podcasts: Episode Three: Costs

N. Minsker et al., "Death in Decline '09," ACLU of Northern California, March 29, 2010. (DPIC Summary)

J. Warren, "Expose Hits Hard at Death Penalty System," Chicago News Cooperative, reported in the N.Y. Times, November 13, 2010. (DPIC Summary)

S. Brown, "The death penalty: Worth the cost?" NWI Times, July 4, 2010 (DPIC Summary)

Tempest, Rone. "Death Row Often Means a Long Life; California Condemns Many Murderers, but Few are ever Executed." Los Angeles Times, Mar 6, 2005

N. Berliner, K. Gardner, & E. Thibault, "Deterrent Value and the Cost of Death Penalty," University of Vermont, 1998

The Death Penalty Internationally

What other countries allow the death penalty? Why does the European Union prohibit the death penalty? Are people who committed crimes when they were minors executed in any countries?

International Perspectives on the Death Penalty: A Costly Isolation for the U.S. by DPIC

The Death Penalty: An International Perspective by DPIC

Amnesty International, "Death Sentences and Executions 2009 (pdf)," released Mar. 30, 2010

"Death Penalty - Beyond Abolition" (Council of Europe Publishing, 2004)

R. Hood,"The Death Penalty: A World-Wide Perspective"; Revised and Updated Edition, Oxford University Press, 2002. Originally published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1996.

Published by the International Commission of Jurists, "The Death Penalty: Condemned" (September, 2000)

W. Schabas, "The abolition of the death penalty in international law," Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997

How the Death Penalty Weakens U.S. International Interests by the American Civil Liberties Union

Death Row

What is death row like? Do death row prisoners ever interact with one another? What is a typical day like for a death row inmate? How many people are on death row in the U.S.?

Death Row by DPIC

Death Row Fact Sheet from the Florida Department of Corrections

Death Row Facts from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

D. Mann, "Solitary Men," The Texas Observer, Nov. 10, 2010 (DPIC Summary)

Rev. C. Pickett, "Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain," St. Martin's Press, 2002

"A Life in the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story" (Arcade Publishing 2001)

R. Loney, "A Dream of the Tattered Man: Stories From Georgia's Death Row," William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2001

R. Murray "Life on Death Row," Albert Publishing Co. in association with 1st Books Library, 2003

S. Christianson, "Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House" New York University Press, 2000

D. Lindorff, "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal," Common Courage Press, 2003

N. Williams, "Still Surviving," Breakout Publishing Co., 2003

R. King, "Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories," Rutgers University Press, 2005

Deterrence

Does the death penalty deter murder? Does it deter murder more than life without parole?

Deterrence by DPIC

DPIC Podcasts Episode Four: Deterrence

T. Kovandzic, L. Vieraitis and D. Paquette Boots, " Does the death penalty save lives? New evidence from state panel data, 1977 to 2006," 8 Criminology & Public Policy 803 (2009) (DPIC Summary)

R. Weisberg "The Death Penalty Meets Social Science: Deterrence and Jury Behavior Under New Scrutiny," Annual Review of Law and Social Science 151 (2005).

Testimony of Jeffrey Fagan before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary of the Massachusetts Legislature on House Bill 3834 (2005)

M. Radelet and R. Akers,"Deterrence and the Death Penalty: The Views of the Experts." Northern Illinois University (1996)

N. Berliner, K. Gardner, & E. Thibault,"Deterrent Value and the Cost of Death Penalty," University of Vermont (1998)

Executions

How many people has the United States executed? How are people executed? Does every state execute people in the same way? Are people still hung? Who puts the inmates to death?

History

When did the death penalty start? How has it changed over the years?

History of the Death Penalty by DPIC

The History of the Death Penalty: a Guide for Students by DPIC

The Espy File: A database of historical executions

Video by Rob Stansfield, PhD of Sociology & Anthropology at University of Guelph, depicting the history of abolition of capital punishment in the United States, on a state by state basis, from 1846 to 2012.

S. Banner, "The Death Penalty: An American History," 2002

R. Bohm, "Deathquest: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States," Anderson Publishing, 1999.

H. Bedau, editor, "The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies," Oxford University Press, 1997.

W. Schabas "The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law," Cambridge University Press, second edition, 1997.

"Society's Final Solution: A History and Discussion of the Death Penalty," L. Randa, editor, University Press of America, 1997.

Innocence

Are there innocent people on death row? Has the United States executed anyone who was innocent? How might innocent people end up on death row? Have any death row inmates been freed?

Innocence and the Death Penalty by DPIC

DPIC Podcasts: Episode Five: Innocence

Innocence and the Crisis in the American Death Penalty by DPIC

Death Penalty: Innocence by the American Civil Liberties Union

The Innocence Project at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University

D. Grann, "Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?" The New Yorker, Sept. 7, 2009

Sister Helen Prejean, "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions," Random House, 2005

"Wrongly Convicted: Perspectives on Failed Justice" Saundra D. Westervelt and John A. Humphrey, eds., Rutgers University Press, July 2001

J. Tucker, "May God Have Mercy: A True Story of Crime and Punishment," Norton Press, 1997

R. Warden and D. Protess, "A Promise of Justice: The Eighteen Year Old Fight to Save Four Innocent Men," 1998

D. Connery, ed."Convicting the innocent: the story of a murder, a false confession, and the struggle to free a 'wrong man;'" Brookline Books, Cambridge, MA, 1996

R. Parloff, "Triple jeopardy: a story of law at its best - and worst;" Little Brown and Company, New York, 1996

A. J. Harris, "Until proven innocent: a true story of murder, honor, and justice;" Avon Books, New York, 1995

Mental Illness

Can you receive the death penalty if you have a mental illness? How does mental illness affect one's responsibility in criminal conduct? Should such illnesses affect the punishment for a crime?

Mental Illness and the Death Penalty by DPIC

F. Bordenave, MD and D. Kelly, MD, "Death Penalty and Mentally Ill Defendants," (Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 2010).

D. Malone, "Cruel and Inhumane: Executing the Mentally Ill," (Amnesty International Magazine, Fall 2005).

K. Miller and M. Radelet, "Executing the mentally ill: the criminal justice system and the case of Alvin Ford"; Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California, 1993

Mental Illness and the Death Penalty in the United States by the American Civil Liberties Union

Intellectual Disability

Intellectual Disability is called "mental retardation" in some older cases and articles. Can you receive the death penalty if you are intellectually disabled? How does or intellectual disability affect one's responsibility in criminal conduct? Should such disabilities affect the punishment for a crime?

Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty by DPIC

J. Blume, S. Johnson and C. Seeds, "An Empirical Look at Atkins v. Virginia and Its Application in Capital Cases," Tennessee Law Review, Vol. 76:625. Spring 2009

E. Reed, "The Penry penalty: capital punishment and offenders with retardation;" University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1993

R. Conley, et al., ed.: "The criminal justice system and retardation;" Paul H. Brooks, Baltimore, MD, 1992

Does the race of the defendant affect the application of the death penalty? Does the race of the crime victims affect the application of the death penalty?

Race and the Death Penalty by DPIC

DPIC Podcasts: Episode Six: Race

Chattahoochee Judicial District - The Buckle of the Death Belt: The Death Penalty in Microcosm by DPIC

Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions 1988-1994 by DPIC

The Death Penalty in Black & White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides by DPIC

S. Dewan, "Blacks Still Being Blocked from Juries in the South, Study Finds," New York Times, June 2, 2010 (DPIC Summary)

D. Baldus and G. Woodworth, "False Attacks on the Proposed NC Racial Justice Act," The Herald-Sun. July 29, 2009.

S. Phillips, "Racial Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment," 45 Houston Law Review 807 (2008) (DPIC Summary)

A. Welsh-Huggins, "Death Penalty Unequal," Associated Press, May 7, 2005.

K. Roberts, "Capital Cases Hard for Smaller Counties," Associated Press, May 8, 2005

J. Seewer, "Two Killers; One Spared," Associated Press, May 9, 2005

Race and the Death Penalty by the American Civil Liberties Union

G. Pierce and M. Radelet, The Impact of Legally Inappropriate Factors on Death Sentencing for California Homicides, 1990-99 Santa Clara Law Review, Vol 46

Representation

Are lawyers paid more for death penalty cases than other criminal cases? Are there standards that defense lawyers in capital cases have to adhere to? Can poor defendants replace their lawyers?

Victims

Are families of victims in favor of or against the death penalty? How do families feel after the murderer of their relative has been executed?

Women

Why are there less women on death row than men? Are women on death row treated differently than men? What kinds of crimes result in the death penalty for women?

Women and the Death Penalty by DPIC

K. O'Shea, "Women and the Death Penalty in the United States, 1900-1998" Praeger Publishers, Westport, Conn.

B. Lowry, "Crossed over: a murder, a memoir;" A. Knopf, New York, 1992

V. Streib, Death Penalty for Female Offenders, January 1, 1973, Through October 30, 2010 Issue #65

Additional DPIC Resources:

High School Curriculum - This award-winning curriculum includes 10-day lesson plans, background information on the death penalty, and also outlines commonly raised pros and cons of the death penalty.

College Curriculum - The college-level curriculum contains teaching cases of individuals who were sentenced to death in the United States. The curriculum provides a detailed narrative account of each individual's legal case, including resources such as the original reports from the homicide investigation, affidavits, and transcripts of testimony from witnesses.

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What is the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC)? The Death Penalty Information Center does not have a position on the death penalty in the abstract. We have been critical through our research and reports of various aspects of the death penalty in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, the...

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The Broken Policing System | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj | Netflix

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Every year, police across the United States arrest - or issue summonses and citations to - a staggering number of people: enforcement decisions that act as a gateway into the criminal legal system. Enforcement of all forms, but especially arrests, has harmful effects on individual people, families, and communities - particularly communities of color.

The nation's justice and safety systems were not designed to serve all people equally. There are stark racial disparities in arrests, and police enforcement disproportionately harms marginalized groups. In response, communities are demanding that public safety be reimagined to ensure justice and equity for all.

This interactive tool enables users to better understand arrests and the current footprint of policing in the United States.

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This interactive visualization tool enables users to better understand police enforcement.

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Every year, police across the United States arrest - or issue summonses and citations to - a staggering number of people: enforcement decisions that act as a gateway into the criminal legal system. Enforcement of all forms, but especially arrests, has harmful effects on individual people, families, and communities - particularly communities of color.

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Page contains links to hundreds of original data visualizations about prisons and criminal justice issues in the United States.

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A nation's rate of incarceration is the number of people incarcerated as a proportion of its total population. Internationally, there is broad variation in the degree to which nations incarcerate their citizens, with a nearly 40-fold difference between the highest and lowest rates. The incarceration rate is often interpreted as a measurement of the degree of punitiveness in a society, although it is an imperfect measurement.

Related to: Incarceration

Oxford University Press published this article in the online Oxford Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Summary and Keywords

A nation's rate of incarceration is the number of people incarcerated as a proportion of its total population. Internationally, there is broad variation in the degree to which nations incarcerate their citizens, with a nearly 40-fold difference between the highest and lowest rates. The incarceration rate is often interpreted as a measurement of the degree of punitiveness in a society, although it is an imperfect measurement. Factors that may influence these rates include rates of serious crime, law enforcement and prosecutorial decision making, scale of prison admissions, length of time served in prison, and other means of social control in a society.

Emerging scholarship is exploring the broader societal factors contributing to a nation's rate of incarceration. These studies explore policy initiatives to prioritize incarceration as a means of crime control, degree of inequality in a society, racial assumptions about crime, and the cultural values of a nation. With the rise of mass incarceration in the United States, a body of research has developed that is assessing the limited public safety benefits and collateral effects of these developments. These counterproductive effects include impacts on family formation and parenting in high-incarceration communities, rates of civic engagement, and the fraying of community bonds and informal social control.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead (1862)

Well over a century has passed since the great Russian author penned those words, and it remains true today that a great deal about a society is revealed by how it treats its most shunned citizens. With only a handful of exceptions around the world, the conditions of confinement in prison systems globally range from inadequate to torturous. Such situations play out both in industrialized and developing nations, and generally regardless of political ideologies or power structures. This state of affairs is truly a sad commentary on how little progress has been made in the past century and raises fundamental questions regarding the institution of the prison and its prospects for reform.

In the 21st century, another means of measuring the degree of civilization in a society is available, a nation's rate of incarceration. At the most basic level the rate of incarceration indicates the degree to which a society prioritizes isolating its citizens from the broader community, with all its attendant consequences. A broad range of policies, politics, and power relations together produce varying levels of imprisonment. But whether incarceration is viewed as the end product of either individual or societal failure, the rate of incarceration nevertheless provides us with an overall assessment of the scale of punishment that a society is willing to impose.

The framework for using rates of incarceration as an indicator of civilization is essentially an outgrowth of the idea that the severe deprivation of individual liberty by a state should only be employed when no other means will accomplish societal goals for public safety. Such standards are incorporated in a variety of national and international conventions and professional policies. For example, the European Convention on Human Rights states that no one shall be deprived of liberty unless certain conditions are met, including "when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so" (Macovei, 2004). Likewise, the American Bar Association standards state that "Sentences ... should be no more severe than necessary to achieve the societal purposes for which they are authorized" (American Bar Association, 1994).

This article is organized in three parts. First, an overview of what is being measured by a rate of incarceration is presented: What does this rate tell us, or not tell us, about a society? Second, a discussion is presented regarding the theoretical and analytical perspectives on understanding and interpreting incarceration rates. What are the structural determinants and what are the proximate dynamics that create varying levels of incarceration? Third, the article explores the ways in which "mass incarceration" in the United States has changed the impact of incarceration compared to its use at more modest levels. And finally, a discussion of the values that should guide us in determining the "right" level of incarceration in a society is presented.

Measuring the Rate of Incarceration

The most common, and relatively standardized, method of measuring a jurisdiction's rate of incarceration is to calculate the number of people imprisoned as a proportion of 100,000 individuals in the total population. Thus, if a nation of 5 million people has 10,000 prisoners, the rate of incarceration is 200 prisoners per 100,000 individuals (i.e., 10,000 divided by 5,000,000 times 100,000).

The leading source of analysis of incarceration rates internationally is the World Prison Brief, published since 2000 by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (formerly the International Centre for Prison Studies). The 2016 edition contains data for 221 nations. The range of incarceration rates is quite broad, from 799 per 100,000 in Seychelles and 693 per 100,000 in the United States to 16 per 100,000 in the Central African Republic and 21 per 100,000 in Liechtenstein. The Brief also breaks this information down by subpopulations, including numbers of women, juveniles, pretrial detainees, and foreign prisoners, as well as the number of prisons and prison capacity within a nation. For purposes of comparison, the Brief combines populations for all forms of incarceration. In the United States, for example, the bifurcated system of jails and prisons is combined to produce this total, whereas in most nations a single prison system houses individuals at all stages of the justice system.

Other bodies publish data on incarceration rates by region. In Europe, for example, the Council of Europe produces a SPACE publication, which provided data on 51 nations in 2014 (Council of Europe, 2015). This publication provides detailed data on number of prisoners, gender, length of sentence, use of preventive detention, changes in the criminal law, prison capacity, and other factors.

These various reports are critical for assessing the relative use of imprisonment in a regional or international context, but there are a number of caveats to such measurements. The definition of incarceration is not always as clear as one might wish. Even the categorization of the use of institutions designed to detain political prisoners varies across nations, often under the rubric of "reeducation centers" or other terminology. Similarly, involuntary confinement in mental hospitals may be employed when individuals present a danger to themselves or others, but it has also been a means of confining political dissidents. Even within penal institutions, there may be significant differences in the relative proportions of remand (pretrial) prisoners and those serving a sentence (Young & Brown, 1993).

Geographical variations in the use of incarceration within a nation can also be quite significant. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that law enforcement and court processing in countries such as the United States is largely a function of local government, incarceration rates may vary broadly within national boundaries (Lynch, 2011). In the United States in 2014, for example, the highest state rate of incarceration in Louisiana of 816 per 100,000 population was more than five times that of Maine, with the lowest state rate of 153 per 100,000 (Carson, 2015).

Another issue regarding the interpretation of incarceration rates relates to the use of a nation's total population (including newborn babies and senior citizens) as the denominator in the measurement. While useful for comparative purposes, the inclusion of the very old and the very young in the calculation masks the actual experience of the at-risk population. In the United States, for example, sophisticated demographic breakdowns provided by the Department of Justice show that the overall rate of imprisonment in state and federal prisons in 2014 was 471 per 100,000 population, or approximately 1 in every 212 residents (Carson, 2015). By gender, however, the overall male rate is 890 per 100,000, 14 times the female rate of 65 per 100,000. But disaggregated by race, gender, and age, the rate of incarceration is 6,412 per 100,000 black males in the 30-34 year-old age group; a stunning 1 in 16 are imprisoned on any given day.

Variation in the interpretation of these rates can be identified in other areas as well. One such area relates to the age distribution of a given population. In developing nations, generally with shorter life expectancy than industrialized nations, a greater proportion of the population is clustered in the high-risk crime years, (World Health Organization, 2003), a factor that generally skews the rate of incarceration upward.

Limitations on Incarceration Rates as an Indicator of Punitiveness

The rate of incarceration provides one measure of the degree of punitiveness in a society, but it does not necessarily explain whether those levels reflect overall societal conditions and crime rates or the functioning of the criminal justice system. A key factor in this regard is that the incarceration rate is a broad brush indicator, but it does not take into account levels of crime, or the efficiency of law enforcement agencies in responding to crime (Pease, 1994). For example, an incarceration rate is more likely to be driven by violent or serious crimes than by lesser offenses (National Research Council, 2014). Therefore, while it might be assumed that if a given nation has a rate of incarceration 20% higher than another's, it is more punitive. But what if it has a rate of violent crime that is 30% higher? In that case, the policies and practices in that system have combined to impose less punishment on persons convicted of crime (i.e., the rate of crime in a jurisdiction is not necessarily a primary explanation for its rate of incarceration, as discussed below).

Another factor that limits the utility of incarceration rates as an assessment of a nation's approach to crime and punishment is the degree to which a nation employs social controls other than incarceration. To take an extreme example, during the period of slavery in the United States, the number (and rate) of black prisoners in the southern states was miniscule because, by definition, almost all African Americans were under the direct control of their owners.

But even in modern societies, other means of social control, such as immigration and detention systems, need to be assessed. Within the criminal justice system, control is exerted through incarceration but also through community supervision under probation or parole. These latter systems are generally less severe in their restrictions, but they nonetheless place limitations on freedom of association, freedom of movement, consumption of alcohol, and a host of other behaviors. In the United States, states such as Rhode Island and Minnesota have very low incarceration rates by American standards, but conversely, they have high community supervision rates (Glaze, Kaeble, Minton, & Tsoutis, 2015).

This phenomenon is extreme in states such as Georgia, where the advent of private probation companies has produced staggeringly high rates of community supervision, more than triple the national average. Given the profit orientation of these companies and the monthly fees that offenders are charged to pay for their cost of supervision, strong financial incentives have been built into the system to keep individuals under supervision for as long as possible (M.S.L.J., 2015). As a result, the rate of community supervision in Georgia dwarfs that of any other state. Notably, the figures for Georgia include misdememeanor probationers supervised by private firms, which may include some double counting (Glaze, Kaeble, Minton, & Tsoutis, 2015).

Another area of social control relates to policing, including policies and practices that can inflict great harm on certain communities without necessarily resulting in imprisonment. In India, for example, Human Rights Watch reports that Indian street children are frequently viewed by police as vagrants and criminals, and therefore they are "routinely detained illegally, beaten and tortured and sometimes killed by police" (Ganesan, 1996). Similar allegations have been made against police in Brazil. In response to the killing of a police officer of an elite squad in the city of Belem in 2014, nine individuals were murdered over the course of a day by people believed to be off-duty law enforcement officers. According to the Wall Street Journal, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, police killed 1 suspect for every 229 suspects arrested in 2012, compared with 1 per 31,575 in the United States in 2011 (Lyons, 2014).

Analyzing the Determinants of a Nation's Rate of Incarceration

In recent decades, coinciding with the development of mass incarceration in the United States and rising rates in other nations, a broad range of scholarship has emerged that attempts to explain these trends. On the surface, the United States would seem to be an unlikely nation to become a world leader in this regard. As a wealthy nation with broad democratic traditions, such a system might otherwise be expected to have the means to address crime through preventive strategies as well as maintaining a healthy skepticism about expanding state power.

Broadly speaking, there are two strains of analysis of mass incarceration. The first is an area of theoretical work that examines superstructural frameworks in society, incorporating socioeconomic analyses and political control. That is, in what ways do power relationships in a society shape the formal and informal means of social control? Further, why did such societal arrangements become so prominent in the late 20th century, and what factors distinguish nations that moved in this direction versus those that did not? Because imprisonment in virtually every nation is disproportionately employed against the poor and minorities, why have some nations taken these dynamics to such extremes (Lynch & Verma, 2016)?

The second set of analyses of mass incarceration relate to the proximate causes of these outcomes. These assessments examine factors such as the relationship between crime rates and incarceration, political initiatives to "get tough," drug control policies, and economic interests. Such deliberate policy choices can exert a strong effect on a nation's rate of incarceration, frequently outweighing the impact of crime trends (National Research Council, 2014). Just as these policy decisions can result in sharp increases in the rate of incarceration, they can also produce rapid declines.

Review of the Literature

A number of scholars looking at comparative trends in the use of incarceration trace national differences to longstanding variations in political and cultural roots. James Q. Whitman ( 2003) explores such variation in the nature of punishment over the course of the past 200 years, comparing the United States with France and Germany. He describes how these European nations in the 18th century had two forms of punishment, a restrained maintenance of dignity for high-status offenders, and "degraded" treatment for commoners. In contrast, in the relatively egalitarian American social structure, both high- and low-status offenders were treated severely. As social class distinctions diminished in Europe, punishment was "leveled up" so that the lower status prisoners were afforded the treatment formerly reserved for the aristocracy, while the United States maintained its longstanding commitment to harsh punishment.

Examining the growth of imprisonment, and in particular the development of mass incarceration in the United States, scholarship in recent decades has explored the dynamics of how a political environment receptive to harsh punishment is created. Is this a function of pressure from below, which has been termed "penal populism, (Pratt, 2007)" or of elites advancing punitive policies as a strategy of social control or political domination?

Joachim Savelsberg ( 1994) theorizes that distinctions in political structures and the criminal justice system influence the degree to which knowledge is produced and crime policy becomes subject to public sentiment. In a comparison of the United States and Germany in the modern era, he proposes that a number of structural factors make the United States particularly susceptible to such populist pressures. These include direct election of judges and prosecutors, private media ownership, and frequent public opinion polling. In Germany, in contrast, decisions are made on bureaucratically produced knowledge, where decision makers and practitioners are more insulated from political pressures (Savelsberg, 1994).

These issues are explored further in the United States by Franklin Zimring and colleagues ( 2001), including an analysis of how penal populism contributed to such extreme measures as the "three strikes and you're out" policy adopted by California voters in 1994. That policy required a mandatory life sentence for any felony conviction following conviction for two prior serious or violent crimes. The authors contend that forms of direct democracy, such as the ballot initiative that produced this policy, exacerbate the scale of punishment by offering a simple "yes or no" proposal that does not permit consideration of competing proposals and compromises normally inherent in legislative deliberations.

The impact of the rise of "penal populism" is explored both in the United States and four other English-speaking nations in the late 20th century by Julian Roberts and colleagues ( 2003). Examining the rise in imprisonment in these nations during a period of declining crime, they contend that this phenomenon is largely explained by changes in sentencing policy and practice, whether legislatively adopted through mandatory sentencing or judicial reaction to harsh public opinion. Lamenting that public opinion on crime is often misinformed, they nonetheless note that political leaders are often eager to exploit this sentiment for their own gain.

A broad-ranging framework for examining how a "culture of control" has developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in particular is offered by David Garland ( 2001). He traces how the philosophy of "penal welfarism" that characterized criminal justice policy prior to the 1970s fell into disrepute along with a more general critique of the welfare state itself. Along with rising crime rates and media sensationalism, the elevation of free market principles shaped a political environment in ways that increasingly emphasized expressive punishments while conceiving of the poor as an underserving underclass. This cultural shift exacerbated the tendency to think about crime through a lens of social control and reconceptualized prison primarily as a site of incapacitation and punishment.

Extending the critique of welfare retrenchment, Loic Wacquant ( 2009) contends that mass incarceration represents a neoliberal state response to rising social dislocation in a postindustrial economy and should be viewed as aligned with the punitive policy shift in the realm of social welfare. Penalization then becomes the preferred response of a state that has little interest in addressing fundamental sources of inequality.

Michael Tonry's ( 2004) perspective on the development of mass incarceration in the United States is that evolving sensibilities-"the ethos or zeitgeist of a moment that influences but does not determine what most people think"-created an environment receptive to harsh policy choices, and were ones that the public was predisposed to believe would be effective (p. 70). Spurred on by media attention to high-profile cases, he suggests that a series of moral panics developed that created an atmosphere of fear and vulnerability.

Other scholars examine the particular political conditions and movements that contributed to the development of mass incarceration. Jonathan Simon ( 2007) frames the American experience with mass incarceration as an outgrowth of "governing through crime." Since the 1960s, a variety of decision makers-presidents and governors, legislators, judges, and law enforcement leaders-have developed politics and policies to challenge the New Deal political order by upending established governmental power relations. This shift built on and exacerbated fear of crime and insecurity. The result was the creation of a climate in which addressing crime became synonymous with support for law enforcement and increasingly harsh punishments, concomitant with growing hostility to the needs of defendants and those in prison.

Marie Gottschalk ( 2006) traces support for mass incarceration not only to such forces, but also to liberal social movements of the 1960s era that contributed to this outcome. For example, she argues that the feminist movement to address domestic violence and sexual assault found willing allies in "law and order" politicians and also played into racist stereotypes about black men and rape. In the case of the death penalty abolition campaign, she contrasts this situation with the abolition movement in Europe. Gottschalk contends that the American movement's strategy involved procedural challenges to capital punishment, as opposed to employing a human rights framework that could have influenced the climate of punishment more broadly.

Racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration have been well documented in many Western nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and similar disproportionate representation can be seen among Aboriginal people in Australia and Maoris in New Zealand. A number of scholars contend that the development of mass incarceration in the United States cannot be understood in isolation from the history of African Americans over several centuries.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad ( 2010) traces the linkage of blacks and crime to the 19th century. Whereas the incidence of white immigrant crime has been perceived in terms of individual failure, black crime has been portrayed as an indication of moral inferiority and a defining feature of black life. Such labeling, produced by social scientists, journalists, political leaders, and even black elites, has created an environment hostile to calls for expanded social welfare policies.

Michelle Alexander ( 2010) explores the astounding rates of black imprisonment in the United States in the context of centuries of racial control. Her concept of "The New Jim Crow" is premised on the assertion that "we have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it" through policies including the war on drugs and restrictions on access to employment, housing, and public benefits for those with a felony conviction (p. 2). Sharon Dolovich ( 2009) extends this argument in noting how the carceral system broadly serves to sustain "the divide between mainstream America" and the "largely poor, young, black (and brown) men" whose isolation and management have come to be seen as socially and politically desirable (p. 256).

These divisions have become exacerbated in recent decades through what Jeremy Travis ( 2002) describes as the "invisible punishment" that is "accomplished through the diminution of the rights and privileges of citizenship and legal residency" (p. 17). A variety of civil disabilities, some of longstanding provenance, others evolving out of the "get tough" period, "operate largely beyond public view, yet have very serious adverse consequences" (p. 16). Travis argues that these punishments should be brought into public view, made visible in sentencing statutes and in the courtroom, and subject to rigorous evaluation and public debate.

Proximate Causes of Incarceration Rates

Fundamentally, the size of a nation's incarcerated population is determined by two simple factors: How many people are sent to prison and how long are they kept there? But even such a basic calculation can be interpreted in different ways.

Consider a hypothetical case of the incarceration policies in two small nations. Nation A sends 100 people per year to prison for an average two-year term. Thus, on any given day there are 200 individuals behind bars. Nation B sends 200 people a year to prison, but only keeps them for a year on average. So, it too, houses 200 people in prison. Criminologists describe these distinctions as "stock" (number of people in prison) and "flow" (prison admissions, or the number of people who experience imprisonment).

In terms of an incarceration rate as a measure of punitiveness, which of these two nations is harsher? Nation A might appear to be harsher because it incarcerates people for twice as long as Nation B (assuming a similar mix of offense convictions and other relevant factors), but Nation B could be considered more punitive because it relies on prison as a sanction twice as often. The two countries may be considered equally harsh if the inquiry is limited to the number of incarcerated people at any given moment, regardless of how they came to be there. Any of these observations are clearly defensible, so drawing conclusions from this scenario merely emphasizes the importance of defining the question of concern.

Crime Rates and Incarceration

In assessing how nations use incarceration, a basic starting point is an examination of the relationship between crime rates and imprisonment. All things being equal, one would expect a higher crime rate (or higher rate of serious crime) would naturally result in a higher rate of incarceration. To the extent that that might be the case, such a nation may have a crime problem but not necessarily a punishment problem.

There is certainly some support for the contention that crime rates may be responsible at least in part for higher rates of incarceration, particularly for violent crimes. In most nations, for example, the vast majority of individuals convicted of homicide are sent to prison, and frequently for long periods of time (or at least for longer than for less serious offenses). A 2015 analysis of rising imprisonment in Western Europe concluded that "prison population rates are influenced by the evolution of the more serious offences" (Aebi, Linde, & Delgrande, 2015, p. 443).

Other scholars find the effect of crime rates to be much more limited. Warren Young and Mark Brown's analysis of incarceration rates in a number of European nations and New Zealand and Australia concluded that "only a small measure of the differences in prison populations between one jurisdiction and another or the changes within prison populations within particular jurisdictions seem to be related to crime rates" (Young & Brown, 1993, p. 33).

Policy Shifts and Scale of Imprisonment

While it is the case that changing rates of serious crime can influence both the number of people admitted to and held in prison, such shifts are not the primary explanation for changes in rates of imprisonment. In its comprehensive assessment of the more than tripling of the state prison population rate in the United States from 1980 to 2010, a panel of distinguished scholars convened by the National Research Council concluded that the entire increase was due to changes in policy, rather than crime rates (National Research Council, 2014). Essentially, a broad set of policy changes resulted in both more offenders being sent to prison and staying there for longer periods of time, in almost equal measure. In addition to a sharp rise in the number of drug arrests nationally, changes included such initiatives as mandatory minimum sentencing, habitual offender statutes, and "truth in sentencing" policies generally requiring that certain offenders serve at least 85% of their sentence before release.

The significance of policies and practices that extend the length of prison stay on overall institutional populations can be seen in comparative international studies of incarceration. One striking finding in this regard is the variation in length of stay across nations and its consequent effect on overall rates of incarceration.

For example, in a comparative assessment of the severity of punishment across the United States, five European nations, and Australia, James Lynch and William Pridemore ( 2011) note that "the United States generally imposes longer sentences on persons sentenced to incarceration than other industrialized nations" (p. 34). For burglary offenses, the time served in the United States of 15.2 months is outpaced by Australia (21.4 months), but it is considerably longer than that of Scotland (4.1 months) and Sweden (6.4 months). Similarly, for robbery, the United States is also second to Australia among these nations (37. 4 months compared to 40.9 months), but has substantially longer times served than Scotland (10.9 months) and the Netherlands (12.5 months).

Degrees of Punitiveness Among Nations

A key determinant in sentence length is the degree of punitiveness embraced by a society. That is, what is the scale of punishment that a society finds comfortable and/or necessary for its stated goals? How should a court system respond to an individual who has stolen a car for the third time, or who has been the lookout for a drugstore robbery, or who has assaulted his domestic partner? Most importantly, these determinations are rarely based on scientific evidence about the optimal amount of prison time or community supervision required to achieve goals of sentencing that may include incapacitation, deterrence, punishment, or rehabilitation. Rather, they reflect the political and cultural sensibilities of the nation at hand and are subject to fluctuations over time.

Regarding public opinion on sentencing policy, harsh attitudes characterize the United States more than comparable nations. An international victimization survey covering 16 nations asked respondents what the appropriate sentence would be for a 21-year-old second-time burglar who had stolen a television set. A high of 56% of U.S. respondents chose prison, compared to an average of 34% for other nations, and in striking contrast to just 20% of respondents in Denmark, 19% in Finland, and 12% in France (Van Kesteren, Mayhew, & Nieuwbeerta, 2000). The degree of punishment employed in the United States can be observed by examining the top of the scale of severity, whereby the United States is virtually alone among industrialized nations in maintaining the death penalty as a sanction (Death Penalty Information Center, 2016a). Japan employs the death penalty as well, but the number of persons sentenced to death and executed annually is generally in the low single digits (Amnesty International, 2016).

In the United States in 2016, more than 3,000 persons were awaiting execution in the 31 states that permit this penalty. Following the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia, which upheld the imposition of capital punishment through a bifurcated process of adjudication and sentencing, more than 1,400 persons have been executed (Death Penalty Information Center, 2016a). Notably, both public and practitioner support for the death penalty has been in decline in the 21st century. From a recent execution peak of 98 in 1999, the numbers had declined to 28 by 2015, with 86% of these in just three states, Texas, Missouri, and Georgia (Death Penalty Information Center, 2016b).

Nevertheless, with the death penalty at the top of the scale of punishment in the United States, there is an inexorable upward pressure on sentencing for all offenses. Because sentencing systems are proportional by nature-murder is punished more harshly than robbery, which is punished more harshly than burglary, etc. The severity of punishments is affected by the relative degree of punitiveness for the most severe crime (American Law Institute, 2011). Indeed, an analysis by Rick Ruddell ( 2005) of 100 nations found a strong positive association between retention of the death penalty and rates of incarceration.

In the United States, the death penalty is virtually unique among industrialized nations, as is the expansive prevalence of sentences of life imprisonment. As of 2012, 159,000 people were serving such prison terms, representing one of every nine people in prison (Nellis, 2013). About a third of this total are serving life without the possibility of parole, and of the population eligible for parole, this form of release has become increasingly more difficult in recent decades due to "get tough" political initiatives of governors, legislatures, and parole boards.

In contrast, most European nations employ life imprisonment, and certainly life without parole, quite sparingly. Nine member nations of the Council of Europe have no provisions for a life sentence, and 32 nations allow a life sentence but with a fixed term of years after which the individual can be considered for parole. The range of these terms is generally between 7 and 25 years. Only five nations make no provision for parole of life-sentenced prisoners, and six others prohibit parole release for some categories of offenses (Appleton, 2015). In addition, many Latin American nations-including Brazil, Costa Rica, Columbia, El Salvador, Peru, and Mexico-have banned any form of life imprisonment (Henry, 2012).

The variation in the harshness of sentencing among nations can be quite broad. In Norway, for example, the maximum punishment for an offense is 21 years in prison. Thus, Anders Breivik, an anti-immigrant terrorist convicted of killing 69 young people at an island political retreat, along with eight others, in 2011, received the maximum sentence of 21 years in prison (Kriminalomsorgen, 2016). Such sentences can be extended by 5 years at a time if the offender is assessed to pose a public safety threat near the expiration of sentence. To place some perspective on the scale of punishment, a sentence in the range of 20 years is not necessarily unusual in the United States, even for a drug offense where no physical harm resulted to an individual.

Economic Factors Influencing Incarceration

A variety of other factors may influence a jurisdiction's rate of incarceration as well. The 1980s ushered in the era of the private prison industry, initially focused on earning profits from the rapidly expanding U.S. prison system, and then spread to at least ten other nations. As of 2011, these systems imprisoned as much as 19% of the prison population in Australia and 17% in Scotland (Mason, 2013).

Although private prison companies contend that they are merely responding to, and not causing, the demand for new cells, there is evidence that they have in fact contributed to rising rates of imprisonment. In the area of immigration detention in the United States, a heavily privatized sector, representatives of the industry worked closely with legislators in the state of Arizona in 2009 to develop a bill widely perceived to be anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic through granting law enforcement officers broad powers to stop motorists on suspicion of being noncitizens (Carter, 2012). The presence of the industry also makes it easier for lawmakers to expand prison systems by bypassing the normal process of securing government funding. By essentially renting cells from private vendors, a jurisdiction avoids having to raise capital funds for construction, which in many cases circumvents the necessity of gaining voter support for such projects.

In the United States, an additional economic factor driving incarceration has been the growing tendency to locate prison facilities in rural areas. Prison officials have long sought to do so, in large part due to lower real-estate prices, but with the stepped-up pace of prison expansion, this trend has been exacerbated. In many such communities, prison expansion has been seen as an economic development strategy designed to respond to declining employment opportunities in manufacturing and other industries. Although research to date has generally not identified long-term benefits to local communities (Hooks, Mosher, Genter, Rotolo, & Lobao, 2010), legislators in distressed rural communities have nonetheless actively sought new prison construction in their home districts. Many of these policymakers have also been key sponsors of punitive sentencing legislation that would result in higher demand for prison bed space. In addition, as prison populations have begun to decline in some jurisdictions, there has been growing resistance to closing institutions that are no longer needed, in order to protect rural prison employment.

Policy Initiatives to Support Decarceration

While political initiatives to "get tough" on crime have frequently led to rising prison populations, conscious policy shifts can also produce decarceration. Perhaps the two most notable examples of nations that have moved in such a direction in recent decades are Finland and Germany.

In the 1950s, the Finnish rate of incarceration of approximately 200 per 100,000 was four times that of other Scandinavian nations (Lappi-Seppälä, 2001). Leading officials in the country became concerned about this vast gap and initiated a series of reforms over several decades. By the 1990s, the Finnish rate was the same as that of its neighbors. Tapio Lappi-Seppäläa traces these changes to an evolving ideology critiquing the notion of "coercive treatment" across the Nordic nations beginning in the 1960s. This philosophy led to declining faith in the power of criminal law as a means of social control, and resulting policy shifts included the decriminalization of public drunkenness, restrictions on the use of preventive detention, increased use of conditional sentences, and reduced penalties for theft. Despite a reduction in the rate of incarceration by more than half over a 40-year period, a comparison of crime trends in the four Nordic nations during this period showed a "striking similarity" among them (Lappi-Seppälä, 2001, p. 121).

A similar initiative was undertaken in West Germany during the period of rehabilitative optimism in the late 1960s. Legislation adopted in 1969 placed a heavy emphasis on the use of noncustodial sentences whenever feasible (Weigend, 2001). Measures included in the new law abolished prison sentences of less than one month, discouraged sentences of less than six months, and decriminalized many traffic and public order offenses. As a result, the number of prison admissions dropped dramatically from 136,000 in 1968 to 35,000 in 1976. The prison population decreased by 25% during this period. Although the number of prison terms imposed remained steady for the next two decades, the prison population then steadily increased, reaching its pre-reform level by the mid-1990s. An analysis of this increase suggests that the sharp reduction in short-term sentences was subsequently outpaced by an increase in sentences of two years or more.

Court decisions have, on occasion, resulted in substantial shifts in rates of incarceration as well. In the case of Brown v. Plata in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the level of overcrowding in the state of California was unconstitutional due to the inability of the state to provide an adequate level of health care in its facilities (Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S. 493, (2011)). Consequently, the Court ordered the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of design capacity within two years, representing a population reduction of more than 30,000. The state was able to comply with the order, in large part through a policy of Realignment, which generally directed that persons convicted of nonviolent offenses or parole violations no longer could be sent to state prison but instead would be supervised either in local jails or under probation. The initial results of the shift indicated no adverse effects on crime rates other than a modest increase in auto theft (Lofstrom & Raphael, 2016). An early assessment of how the population reduction affected overall decarceration, whether counties merely shifted incarceration to local jails, concluded that factors associated with decarceration "do not precisely mirror those of incarceration," suggesting the need for further exploration of these dynamics (Verma, 2016, p. 132).

Impact of High Rates of Incarceration

In recent decades, substantial increases in the use of incarceration in many nations have occurred, resulting in extreme cases of "mass incarceration." Imprisonment clearly is a profound life experience for the person who is incarcerated. But in societies that have produced particularly high levels of incarceration the impact of prison goes well beyond the individual and now affects his or her family and community in diverse ways. In the United States in particular, a growing body of scholarship is addressing these issues (Mauer & Chesney-Lind, 2002).

A first line of inquiry regarding the impact of high rates of incarceration concerns the effect of such developments on crime rates. The policies that have led to mass incarceration have generally been promoted with the rationale of addressing crime. This shift has variously been framed as being accomplished through general deterrence-"sending a message" to potential offenders-or incapacitation-"locking the door and throwing away the key."

While incarceration certainly has some effect on crime-if nothing else, through incapacitating high-rate offenders for a period of time-it is increasingly clear that high rates of incarceration produce diminishing returns for public safety. There are a number of reasons why this is the case. First, as the number of people imprisoned rises, there is a general tendency to lock up increasingly less serious offenders. For example, in a prison system of modest size, a justice system concerned with burglary crimes would likely target its resources to incarcerate high-rate offenders. But with an expanded availability of prison cells, no such prioritizing is necessary, and there is room to imprison both high-rate and low-rate offenders.

A review of data in the United States illustrates the significance of this factor (Canela-Cacho Blumstein, & Cohen, 1997). Researchers examined self-reported inmate data on frequency of offending in three states compiled in the late 1970s compared to offending rates of free offenders. They found sharp differences in the offending frequency of the two groups. Free robbery offenders reported committing an average of one to three robberies per year and free burglary offenders reported two to four burglaries annually, while incarcerated offenders reported offending rates 10 to 50 times higher. Thus, the incapacitation effect of expanded incarceration would be substantially lower because so many fewer offenses would be "prevented" as a result. Notably, these data are from the early years of the development of mass incarceration in the United States; therefore, the dramatic increases in prison populations in succeeding decades almost certainly produced substantial diminishing returns for public safety.

A second factor that limits the effect of incarceration on crime is the length of time spent in prison. For sentences of ten years or more, any crime control impact is offset by the "aging out" of crime process. Cross-national research shows that rates of engagement in criminal behavior, particularly for males, rise sharply in the late teenage years but then decline fairly rapidly by the mid- to late twenties (Weitekamp & Kerner, 1994). Thus, incarcerating offenders well into their thirties, forties, or fifties produce successively reduced gains for public safety. Clearly, corrections and parole officials need to make individualized determinations of risk, but as an overall policy matter, long prison terms certainly produce diminishing returns.

A comprehensive assessment of these issues in the United States was undertaken by the National Research Council. In their 2014 report on the causes and consequences of high rates of imprisonment, the panel concluded that the magnitude of the crime-reducing effect of incarceration was uncertain but that "the evidence suggests that it was unlikely to have been large" (National Research Council, 2014, p. 155).

Scholars have also addressed the potential counterproductive effects of high levels of incarceration. One such line of inquiry explores these effects in high incarceration neighborhoods, those in which a substantial portion of the population is imprisoned at any given moment. A study by Todd Clear and colleagues in Tallahassee, Florida found that at modest levels of incarceration there was a positive effect in reducing crime, but at higher levels the impact was actually counterproductive and contributed to increases in crime (Clear, Rose, Waring, & Scully 2003). They attribute this effect to the diminishing of informal social control mechanisms that serve to establish social norms and create bonds among family and community members. Another effect of high incarceration relates to its impact on family formation and child rearing. In Donald Braman's examination of the geographic disparity in imprisonment, he finds that in highly affected neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., there are only 62 adult men for every 100 adult women (Braman, 2002). Some of the "missing" men have died or are serving in the military, but many are incarcerated. Thus, the ability of women to find marriage and parenting partners is considerably diminished. Similar effects have been documented for increased rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies in areas of high rates of incarceration (Thomas & Torrone, 2006). These alterations come about due to imbalances in gender ratios, disruption of social networks and cohesion, and the resulting impact on community norms.

High rates of incarceration also adversely affect socioeconomic conditions in low-income communities of color. This conversion begins with the effect on wage earnings for people with a prison record. A review of the literature by the National Research Council finds that although the research does not uniformly find negative employment outcomes, "The balance of quantitative results points to the negative consequences of incarceration for employment" (National Research Council, 2014, p. 247), with studies frequently finding reductions in employment outcomes of 10% to 30%.

For the nation as a whole, economic output in the United States is likely to be affected through the "hidden unemployment" of those who are incarcerated as well as underemployment of those with felony convictions. A study of 2008 economic data estimated that due to poor employment prospects for individuals with criminal records the male employment rate was reduced by 1.5% to 1.7% that year, and that GDP output was reduced by $57 to $65 billion (Schmitt & Warner, 2010).

Finally, incarceration at any level raises issues of opportunity costs and questions of whether alternative investments of resources would produce different outcomes for public safety. This effect, as well, is exacerbated in nations with a high level of incarceration, where one can expect to see diminishing returns for public safety on a far larger scale than for nations with lower rates. A variety of research demonstrates that social intervention and substance-abuse treatment programs frequently produce more substantial public safety outcomes than does expanded imprisonment (Weisburd, Farrington, & Gill, 2016).

A Rational Rate of Incarceration

Given the wide variation among and within nations, the "right" rate of incarceration for a given nation remains debatable. The answer essentially depends on the goals of a particular society.

Just prior to the historic rise of the prison population in the United States, criminologists Alfred Blumstein and Jacqueline Cohen theorized that a society develops a "stability of punishment" that reflects its norms and reinforces social solidarity. Following the work of Durkheim and Erikson, and using data from the United States and Norway over several decades, they contended that "society tries to impose a fairly constant level of punishment" and that "the behavior it punishes responds to shifts in the behavior distribution" (Blumstein & Cohen, 1973, p. 207).

That article was published in 1973, the first year of the four-decade prison increase toward mass incarceration. These developments offer a strong challenge to the "stability of punishment" framework, but this conclusion may be misguided. Just as Blumstein and Cohen noted differences in the punishment thresholds between the United States and Norway, societies may evolve over time and establish societal norms that support greater or lesser scales of acceptable punishment. Pierre Tremblay suggests that "the stability hypothesis does not explain why penal evolution experiences normative revolutions. It does not deny that such normative revolutions occur; it claims only that the rate of punishment will be stable before and after these revolutions take place" (Tremblay, 1986, p. 177).

The late criminologist Nils Christie posed questions along these lines, focused on how much punishment a society should choose to impose. "When has a prison population in a country reached a level when at least our intuition says that this is wrong, completely wrong, unacceptable!" (Christie, 2004, p. 102) He answers with reference to basic human values, stating that if we believe in the values of kindness and forgiving, in keeping civil societies civil, and in living in cohesive, integrated societies, "then we ought to keep the institution of penal law a small one" (Christie, 2004, p. 105).

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Summary and Keywords

A nation's rate of incarceration is the number of people incarcerated as a proportion of its total population. Internationally, there is broad variation in the degree to which nations incarcerate their citizens, with a nearly 40-fold difference between the highest and lowest rates. The incarceration rate is often interpreted as a measurement of the degree of punitiveness in a society, although it is an imperfect measurement. Factors that may influence these rates include rates of serious crime, law enforcement and prosecutorial decision making, scale of prison admissions, length of time served in prison, and other means of social control in a society.

Emerging scholarship is exploring the broader societal factors contributing to a nation's rate of incarceration. These studies explore policy initiatives to prioritize incarceration as a means of crime control, degree of inequality in a society, racial assumptions about crime, and the cultural values of a nation. With the rise of mass incarceration in the United States, a body of research has developed that is assessing the limited public safety benefits and collateral effects of these developments. These counterproductive effects include impacts on family formation and parenting in high-incarceration communities, rates of civic engagement, and the fraying of community bonds and informal social control.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead (1862)

Well over a century has passed since the great Russian author penned those words, and it remains true today that a great deal about a society is revealed by how it treats its most shunned citizens. With only a handful of exceptions around the world, the conditions of confinement in prison systems globally range from inadequate to torturous. Such situations play out both in industrialized and developing nations, and generally regardless of political ideologies or power structures. This state of affairs is truly a sad commentary on how little progress has been made in the past century and raises fundamental questions regarding the institution of the prison and its prospects for reform.

In the 21st century, another means of measuring the degree of civilization in a society is available, a nation's rate of incarceration. At the most basic level the rate of incarceration indicates the degree to which a society prioritizes isolating its citizens from the broader community, with all its attendant consequences. A broad range of policies, politics, and power relations together produce varying levels of imprisonment. But whether incarceration is viewed as the end product of either individual or societal failure, the rate of incarceration nevertheless provides us with an overall assessment of the scale of punishment that a society is willing to impose.

The framework for using rates of incarceration as an indicator of civilization is essentially an outgrowth of the idea that the severe deprivation of individual liberty by a state should only be employed when no other means will accomplish societal goals for public safety. Such standards are incorporated in a variety of national and international conventions and professional policies. For example, the European Convention on Human Rights states that no one shall be deprived of liberty unless certain conditions are met, including "when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so" (Macovei, 2004). Likewise, the American Bar Association standards state that "Sentences ... should be no more severe than necessary to achieve the societal purposes for which they are authorized" (American Bar Association, 1994).

This article is organized in three parts. First, an overview of what is being measured by a rate of incarceration is presented: What does this rate tell us, or not tell us, about a society? Second, a discussion is presented regarding the theoretical and analytical perspectives on understanding and interpreting incarceration rates. What are the structural determinants and what are the proximate dynamics that create varying levels of incarceration? Third, the article explores the ways in which "mass incarceration" in the United States has changed the impact of incarceration compared to its use at more modest levels. And finally, a discussion of the values that should guide us in determining the "right" level of incarceration in a society is presented.

Measuring the Rate of Incarceration

The most common, and relatively standardized, method of measuring a jurisdiction's rate of incarceration is to calculate the number of people imprisoned as a proportion of 100,000 individuals in the total population. Thus, if a nation of 5 million people has 10,000 prisoners, the rate of incarceration is 200 prisoners per 100,000 individuals (i.e., 10,000 divided by 5,000,000 times 100,000).

The leading source of analysis of incarceration rates internationally is the World Prison Brief, published since 2000 by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (formerly the International Centre for Prison Studies). The 2016 edition contains data for 221 nations. The range of incarceration rates is quite broad, from 799 per 100,000 in Seychelles and 693 per 100,000 in the United States to 16 per 100,000 in the Central African Republic and 21 per 100,000 in Liechtenstein. The Brief also breaks this information down by subpopulations, including numbers of women, juveniles, pretrial detainees, and foreign prisoners, as well as the number of prisons and prison capacity within a nation. For purposes of comparison, the Brief combines populations for all forms of incarceration. In the United States, for example, the bifurcated system of jails and prisons is combined to produce this total, whereas in most nations a single prison system houses individuals at all stages of the justice system.

Other bodies publish data on incarceration rates by region. In Europe, for example, the Council of Europe produces a SPACE publication, which provided data on 51 nations in 2014 (Council of Europe, 2015). This publication provides detailed data on number of prisoners, gender, length of sentence, use of preventive detention, changes in the criminal law, prison capacity, and other factors.

These various reports are critical for assessing the relative use of imprisonment in a regional or international context, but there are a number of caveats to such measurements. The definition of incarceration is not always as clear as one might wish. Even the categorization of the use of institutions designed to detain political prisoners varies across nations, often under the rubric of "reeducation centers" or other terminology. Similarly, involuntary confinement in mental hospitals may be employed when individuals present a danger to themselves or others, but it has also been a means of confining political dissidents. Even within penal institutions, there may be significant differences in the relative proportions of remand (pretrial) prisoners and those serving a sentence (Young & Brown, 1993).

Geographical variations in the use of incarceration within a nation can also be quite significant. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that law enforcement and court processing in countries such as the United States is largely a function of local government, incarceration rates may vary broadly within national boundaries (Lynch, 2011). In the United States in 2014, for example, the highest state rate of incarceration in Louisiana of 816 per 100,000 population was more than five times that of Maine, with the lowest state rate of 153 per 100,000 (Carson, 2015).

Another issue regarding the interpretation of incarceration rates relates to the use of a nation's total population (including newborn babies and senior citizens) as the denominator in the measurement. While useful for comparative purposes, the inclusion of the very old and the very young in the calculation masks the actual experience of the at-risk population. In the United States, for example, sophisticated demographic breakdowns provided by the Department of Justice show that the overall rate of imprisonment in state and federal prisons in 2014 was 471 per 100,000 population, or approximately 1 in every 212 residents (Carson, 2015). By gender, however, the overall male rate is 890 per 100,000, 14 times the female rate of 65 per 100,000. But disaggregated by race, gender, and age, the rate of incarceration is 6,412 per 100,000 black males in the 30-34 year-old age group; a stunning 1 in 16 are imprisoned on any given day.

Variation in the interpretation of these rates can be identified in other areas as well. One such area relates to the age distribution of a given population. In developing nations, generally with shorter life expectancy than industrialized nations, a greater proportion of the population is clustered in the high-risk crime years, (World Health Organization, 2003), a factor that generally skews the rate of incarceration upward.

Limitations on Incarceration Rates as an Indicator of Punitiveness

The rate of incarceration provides one measure of the degree of punitiveness in a society, but it does not necessarily explain whether those levels reflect overall societal conditions and crime rates or the functioning of the criminal justice system. A key factor in this regard is that the incarceration rate is a broad brush indicator, but it does not take into account levels of crime, or the efficiency of law enforcement agencies in responding to crime (Pease, 1994). For example, an incarceration rate is more likely to be driven by violent or serious crimes than by lesser offenses (National Research Council, 2014). Therefore, while it might be assumed that if a given nation has a rate of incarceration 20% higher than another's, it is more punitive. But what if it has a rate of violent crime that is 30% higher? In that case, the policies and practices in that system have combined to impose less punishment on persons convicted of crime (i.e., the rate of crime in a jurisdiction is not necessarily a primary explanation for its rate of incarceration, as discussed below).

Another factor that limits the utility of incarceration rates as an assessment of a nation's approach to crime and punishment is the degree to which a nation employs social controls other than incarceration. To take an extreme example, during the period of slavery in the United States, the number (and rate) of black prisoners in the southern states was miniscule because, by definition, almost all African Americans were under the direct control of their owners.

But even in modern societies, other means of social control, such as immigration and detention systems, need to be assessed. Within the criminal justice system, control is exerted through incarceration but also through community supervision under probation or parole. These latter systems are generally less severe in their restrictions, but they nonetheless place limitations on freedom of association, freedom of movement, consumption of alcohol, and a host of other behaviors. In the United States, states such as Rhode Island and Minnesota have very low incarceration rates by American standards, but conversely, they have high community supervision rates (Glaze, Kaeble, Minton, & Tsoutis, 2015).

This phenomenon is extreme in states such as Georgia, where the advent of private probation companies has produced staggeringly high rates of community supervision, more than triple the national average. Given the profit orientation of these companies and the monthly fees that offenders are charged to pay for their cost of supervision, strong financial incentives have been built into the system to keep individuals under supervision for as long as possible (M.S.L.J., 2015). As a result, the rate of community supervision in Georgia dwarfs that of any other state. Notably, the figures for Georgia include misdememeanor probationers supervised by private firms, which may include some double counting (Glaze, Kaeble, Minton, & Tsoutis, 2015).

Another area of social control relates to policing, including policies and practices that can inflict great harm on certain communities without necessarily resulting in imprisonment. In India, for example, Human Rights Watch reports that Indian street children are frequently viewed by police as vagrants and criminals, and therefore they are "routinely detained illegally, beaten and tortured and sometimes killed by police" (Ganesan, 1996). Similar allegations have been made against police in Brazil. In response to the killing of a police officer of an elite squad in the city of Belem in 2014, nine individuals were murdered over the course of a day by people believed to be off-duty law enforcement officers. According to the Wall Street Journal, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, police killed 1 suspect for every 229 suspects arrested in 2012, compared with 1 per 31,575 in the United States in 2011 (Lyons, 2014).

Analyzing the Determinants of a Nation's Rate of Incarceration

In recent decades, coinciding with the development of mass incarceration in the United States and rising rates in other nations, a broad range of scholarship has emerged that attempts to explain these trends. On the surface, the United States would seem to be an unlikely nation to become a world leader in this regard. As a wealthy nation with broad democratic traditions, such a system might otherwise be expected to have the means to address crime through preventive strategies as well as maintaining a healthy skepticism about expanding state power.

Broadly speaking, there are two strains of analysis of mass incarceration. The first is an area of theoretical work that examines superstructural frameworks in society, incorporating socioeconomic analyses and political control. That is, in what ways do power relationships in a society shape the formal and informal means of social control? Further, why did such societal arrangements become so prominent in the late 20th century, and what factors distinguish nations that moved in this direction versus those that did not? Because imprisonment in virtually every nation is disproportionately employed against the poor and minorities, why have some nations taken these dynamics to such extremes (Lynch & Verma, 2016)?

The second set of analyses of mass incarceration relate to the proximate causes of these outcomes. These assessments examine factors such as the relationship between crime rates and incarceration, political initiatives to "get tough," drug control policies, and economic interests. Such deliberate policy choices can exert a strong effect on a nation's rate of incarceration, frequently outweighing the impact of crime trends (National Research Council, 2014). Just as these policy decisions can result in sharp increases in the rate of incarceration, they can also produce rapid declines.

Review of the Literature

A number of scholars looking at comparative trends in the use of incarceration trace national differences to longstanding variations in political and cultural roots. James Q. Whitman ( 2003) explores such variation in the nature of punishment over the course of the past 200 years, comparing the United States with France and Germany. He describes how these European nations in the 18th century had two forms of punishment, a restrained maintenance of dignity for high-status offenders, and "degraded" treatment for commoners. In contrast, in the relatively egalitarian American social structure, both high- and low-status offenders were treated severely. As social class distinctions diminished in Europe, punishment was "leveled up" so that the lower status prisoners were afforded the treatment formerly reserved for the aristocracy, while the United States maintained its longstanding commitment to harsh punishment.

Examining the growth of imprisonment, and in particular the development of mass incarceration in the United States, scholarship in recent decades has explored the dynamics of how a political environment receptive to harsh punishment is created. Is this a function of pressure from below, which has been termed "penal populism, (Pratt, 2007)" or of elites advancing punitive policies as a strategy of social control or political domination?

Joachim Savelsberg ( 1994) theorizes that distinctions in political structures and the criminal justice system influence the degree to which knowledge is produced and crime policy becomes subject to public sentiment. In a comparison of the United States and Germany in the modern era, he proposes that a number of structural factors make the United States particularly susceptible to such populist pressures. These include direct election of judges and prosecutors, private media ownership, and frequent public opinion polling. In Germany, in contrast, decisions are made on bureaucratically produced knowledge, where decision makers and practitioners are more insulated from political pressures (Savelsberg, 1994).

These issues are explored further in the United States by Franklin Zimring and colleagues ( 2001), including an analysis of how penal populism contributed to such extreme measures as the "three strikes and you're out" policy adopted by California voters in 1994. That policy required a mandatory life sentence for any felony conviction following conviction for two prior serious or violent crimes. The authors contend that forms of direct democracy, such as the ballot initiative that produced this policy, exacerbate the scale of punishment by offering a simple "yes or no" proposal that does not permit consideration of competing proposals and compromises normally inherent in legislative deliberations.

The impact of the rise of "penal populism" is explored both in the United States and four other English-speaking nations in the late 20th century by Julian Roberts and colleagues ( 2003). Examining the rise in imprisonment in these nations during a period of declining crime, they contend that this phenomenon is largely explained by changes in sentencing policy and practice, whether legislatively adopted through mandatory sentencing or judicial reaction to harsh public opinion. Lamenting that public opinion on crime is often misinformed, they nonetheless note that political leaders are often eager to exploit this sentiment for their own gain.

A broad-ranging framework for examining how a "culture of control" has developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in particular is offered by David Garland ( 2001). He traces how the philosophy of "penal welfarism" that characterized criminal justice policy prior to the 1970s fell into disrepute along with a more general critique of the welfare state itself. Along with rising crime rates and media sensationalism, the elevation of free market principles shaped a political environment in ways that increasingly emphasized expressive punishments while conceiving of the poor as an underserving underclass. This cultural shift exacerbated the tendency to think about crime through a lens of social control and reconceptualized prison primarily as a site of incapacitation and punishment.

Extending the critique of welfare retrenchment, Loic Wacquant ( 2009) contends that mass incarceration represents a neoliberal state response to rising social dislocation in a postindustrial economy and should be viewed as aligned with the punitive policy shift in the realm of social welfare. Penalization then becomes the preferred response of a state that has little interest in addressing fundamental sources of inequality.

Michael Tonry's ( 2004) perspective on the development of mass incarceration in the United States is that evolving sensibilities-"the ethos or zeitgeist of a moment that influences but does not determine what most people think"-created an environment receptive to harsh policy choices, and were ones that the public was predisposed to believe would be effective (p. 70). Spurred on by media attention to high-profile cases, he suggests that a series of moral panics developed that created an atmosphere of fear and vulnerability.

Other scholars examine the particular political conditions and movements that contributed to the development of mass incarceration. Jonathan Simon ( 2007) frames the American experience with mass incarceration as an outgrowth of "governing through crime." Since the 1960s, a variety of decision makers-presidents and governors, legislators, judges, and law enforcement leaders-have developed politics and policies to challenge the New Deal political order by upending established governmental power relations. This shift built on and exacerbated fear of crime and insecurity. The result was the creation of a climate in which addressing crime became synonymous with support for law enforcement and increasingly harsh punishments, concomitant with growing hostility to the needs of defendants and those in prison.

Marie Gottschalk ( 2006) traces support for mass incarceration not only to such forces, but also to liberal social movements of the 1960s era that contributed to this outcome. For example, she argues that the feminist movement to address domestic violence and sexual assault found willing allies in "law and order" politicians and also played into racist stereotypes about black men and rape. In the case of the death penalty abolition campaign, she contrasts this situation with the abolition movement in Europe. Gottschalk contends that the American movement's strategy involved procedural challenges to capital punishment, as opposed to employing a human rights framework that could have influenced the climate of punishment more broadly.

Racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration have been well documented in many Western nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and similar disproportionate representation can be seen among Aboriginal people in Australia and Maoris in New Zealand. A number of scholars contend that the development of mass incarceration in the United States cannot be understood in isolation from the history of African Americans over several centuries.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad ( 2010) traces the linkage of blacks and crime to the 19th century. Whereas the incidence of white immigrant crime has been perceived in terms of individual failure, black crime has been portrayed as an indication of moral inferiority and a defining feature of black life. Such labeling, produced by social scientists, journalists, political leaders, and even black elites, has created an environment hostile to calls for expanded social welfare policies.

Michelle Alexander ( 2010) explores the astounding rates of black imprisonment in the United States in the context of centuries of racial control. Her concept of "The New Jim Crow" is premised on the assertion that "we have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it" through policies including the war on drugs and restrictions on access to employment, housing, and public benefits for those with a felony conviction (p. 2). Sharon Dolovich ( 2009) extends this argument in noting how the carceral system broadly serves to sustain "the divide between mainstream America" and the "largely poor, young, black (and brown) men" whose isolation and management have come to be seen as socially and politically desirable (p. 256).

These divisions have become exacerbated in recent decades through what Jeremy Travis ( 2002) describes as the "invisible punishment" that is "accomplished through the diminution of the rights and privileges of citizenship and legal residency" (p. 17). A variety of civil disabilities, some of longstanding provenance, others evolving out of the "get tough" period, "operate largely beyond public view, yet have very serious adverse consequences" (p. 16). Travis argues that these punishments should be brought into public view, made visible in sentencing statutes and in the courtroom, and subject to rigorous evaluation and public debate.

Proximate Causes of Incarceration Rates

Fundamentally, the size of a nation's incarcerated population is determined by two simple factors: How many people are sent to prison and how long are they kept there? But even such a basic calculation can be interpreted in different ways.

Consider a hypothetical case of the incarceration policies in two small nations. Nation A sends 100 people per year to prison for an average two-year term. Thus, on any given day there are 200 individuals behind bars. Nation B sends 200 people a year to prison, but only keeps them for a year on average. So, it too, houses 200 people in prison. Criminologists describe these distinctions as "stock" (number of people in prison) and "flow" (prison admissions, or the number of people who experience imprisonment).

In terms of an incarceration rate as a measure of punitiveness, which of these two nations is harsher? Nation A might appear to be harsher because it incarcerates people for twice as long as Nation B (assuming a similar mix of offense convictions and other relevant factors), but Nation B could be considered more punitive because it relies on prison as a sanction twice as often. The two countries may be considered equally harsh if the inquiry is limited to the number of incarcerated people at any given moment, regardless of how they came to be there. Any of these observations are clearly defensible, so drawing conclusions from this scenario merely emphasizes the importance of defining the question of concern.

Crime Rates and Incarceration

In assessing how nations use incarceration, a basic starting point is an examination of the relationship between crime rates and imprisonment. All things being equal, one would expect a higher crime rate (or higher rate of serious crime) would naturally result in a higher rate of incarceration. To the extent that that might be the case, such a nation may have a crime problem but not necessarily a punishment problem.

There is certainly some support for the contention that crime rates may be responsible at least in part for higher rates of incarceration, particularly for violent crimes. In most nations, for example, the vast majority of individuals convicted of homicide are sent to prison, and frequently for long periods of time (or at least for longer than for less serious offenses). A 2015 analysis of rising imprisonment in Western Europe concluded that "prison population rates are influenced by the evolution of the more serious offences" (Aebi, Linde, & Delgrande, 2015, p. 443).

Other scholars find the effect of crime rates to be much more limited. Warren Young and Mark Brown's analysis of incarceration rates in a number of European nations and New Zealand and Australia concluded that "only a small measure of the differences in prison populations between one jurisdiction and another or the changes within prison populations within particular jurisdictions seem to be related to crime rates" (Young & Brown, 1993, p. 33).

Policy Shifts and Scale of Imprisonment

While it is the case that changing rates of serious crime can influence both the number of people admitted to and held in prison, such shifts are not the primary explanation for changes in rates of imprisonment. In its comprehensive assessment of the more than tripling of the state prison population rate in the United States from 1980 to 2010, a panel of distinguished scholars convened by the National Research Council concluded that the entire increase was due to changes in policy, rather than crime rates (National Research Council, 2014). Essentially, a broad set of policy changes resulted in both more offenders being sent to prison and staying there for longer periods of time, in almost equal measure. In addition to a sharp rise in the number of drug arrests nationally, changes included such initiatives as mandatory minimum sentencing, habitual offender statutes, and "truth in sentencing" policies generally requiring that certain offenders serve at least 85% of their sentence before release.

The significance of policies and practices that extend the length of prison stay on overall institutional populations can be seen in comparative international studies of incarceration. One striking finding in this regard is the variation in length of stay across nations and its consequent effect on overall rates of incarceration.

For example, in a comparative assessment of the severity of punishment across the United States, five European nations, and Australia, James Lynch and William Pridemore ( 2011) note that "the United States generally imposes longer sentences on persons sentenced to incarceration than other industrialized nations" (p. 34). For burglary offenses, the time served in the United States of 15.2 months is outpaced by Australia (21.4 months), but it is considerably longer than that of Scotland (4.1 months) and Sweden (6.4 months). Similarly, for robbery, the United States is also second to Australia among these nations (37. 4 months compared to 40.9 months), but has substantially longer times served than Scotland (10.9 months) and the Netherlands (12.5 months).

Degrees of Punitiveness Among Nations

A key determinant in sentence length is the degree of punitiveness embraced by a society. That is, what is the scale of punishment that a society finds comfortable and/or necessary for its stated goals? How should a court system respond to an individual who has stolen a car for the third time, or who has been the lookout for a drugstore robbery, or who has assaulted his domestic partner? Most importantly, these determinations are rarely based on scientific evidence about the optimal amount of prison time or community supervision required to achieve goals of sentencing that may include incapacitation, deterrence, punishment, or rehabilitation. Rather, they reflect the political and cultural sensibilities of the nation at hand and are subject to fluctuations over time.

Regarding public opinion on sentencing policy, harsh attitudes characterize the United States more than comparable nations. An international victimization survey covering 16 nations asked respondents what the appropriate sentence would be for a 21-year-old second-time burglar who had stolen a television set. A high of 56% of U.S. respondents chose prison, compared to an average of 34% for other nations, and in striking contrast to just 20% of respondents in Denmark, 19% in Finland, and 12% in France (Van Kesteren, Mayhew, & Nieuwbeerta, 2000). The degree of punishment employed in the United States can be observed by examining the top of the scale of severity, whereby the United States is virtually alone among industrialized nations in maintaining the death penalty as a sanction (Death Penalty Information Center, 2016a). Japan employs the death penalty as well, but the number of persons sentenced to death and executed annually is generally in the low single digits (Amnesty International, 2016).

In the United States in 2016, more than 3,000 persons were awaiting execution in the 31 states that permit this penalty. Following the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia, which upheld the imposition of capital punishment through a bifurcated process of adjudication and sentencing, more than 1,400 persons have been executed (Death Penalty Information Center, 2016a). Notably, both public and practitioner support for the death penalty has been in decline in the 21st century. From a recent execution peak of 98 in 1999, the numbers had declined to 28 by 2015, with 86% of these in just three states, Texas, Missouri, and Georgia (Death Penalty Information Center, 2016b).

Nevertheless, with the death penalty at the top of the scale of punishment in the United States, there is an inexorable upward pressure on sentencing for all offenses. Because sentencing systems are proportional by nature-murder is punished more harshly than robbery, which is punished more harshly than burglary, etc. The severity of punishments is affected by the relative degree of punitiveness for the most severe crime (American Law Institute, 2011). Indeed, an analysis by Rick Ruddell ( 2005) of 100 nations found a strong positive association between retention of the death penalty and rates of incarceration.

In the United States, the death penalty is virtually unique among industrialized nations, as is the expansive prevalence of sentences of life imprisonment. As of 2012, 159,000 people were serving such prison terms, representing one of every nine people in prison (Nellis, 2013). About a third of this total are serving life without the possibility of parole, and of the population eligible for parole, this form of release has become increasingly more difficult in recent decades due to "get tough" political initiatives of governors, legislatures, and parole boards.

In contrast, most European nations employ life imprisonment, and certainly life without parole, quite sparingly. Nine member nations of the Council of Europe have no provisions for a life sentence, and 32 nations allow a life sentence but with a fixed term of years after which the individual can be considered for parole. The range of these terms is generally between 7 and 25 years. Only five nations make no provision for parole of life-sentenced prisoners, and six others prohibit parole release for some categories of offenses (Appleton, 2015). In addition, many Latin American nations-including Brazil, Costa Rica, Columbia, El Salvador, Peru, and Mexico-have banned any form of life imprisonment (Henry, 2012).

The variation in the harshness of sentencing among nations can be quite broad. In Norway, for example, the maximum punishment for an offense is 21 years in prison. Thus, Anders Breivik, an anti-immigrant terrorist convicted of killing 69 young people at an island political retreat, along with eight others, in 2011, received the maximum sentence of 21 years in prison (Kriminalomsorgen, 2016). Such sentences can be extended by 5 years at a time if the offender is assessed to pose a public safety threat near the expiration of sentence. To place some perspective on the scale of punishment, a sentence in the range of 20 years is not necessarily unusual in the United States, even for a drug offense where no physical harm resulted to an individual.

Economic Factors Influencing Incarceration

A variety of other factors may influence a jurisdiction's rate of incarceration as well. The 1980s ushered in the era of the private prison industry, initially focused on earning profits from the rapidly expanding U.S. prison system, and then spread to at least ten other nations. As of 2011, these systems imprisoned as much as 19% of the prison population in Australia and 17% in Scotland (Mason, 2013).

Although private prison companies contend that they are merely responding to, and not causing, the demand for new cells, there is evidence that they have in fact contributed to rising rates of imprisonment. In the area of immigration detention in the United States, a heavily privatized sector, representatives of the industry worked closely with legislators in the state of Arizona in 2009 to develop a bill widely perceived to be anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic through granting law enforcement officers broad powers to stop motorists on suspicion of being noncitizens (Carter, 2012). The presence of the industry also makes it easier for lawmakers to expand prison systems by bypassing the normal process of securing government funding. By essentially renting cells from private vendors, a jurisdiction avoids having to raise capital funds for construction, which in many cases circumvents the necessity of gaining voter support for such projects.

In the United States, an additional economic factor driving incarceration has been the growing tendency to locate prison facilities in rural areas. Prison officials have long sought to do so, in large part due to lower real-estate prices, but with the stepped-up pace of prison expansion, this trend has been exacerbated. In many such communities, prison expansion has been seen as an economic development strategy designed to respond to declining employment opportunities in manufacturing and other industries. Although research to date has generally not identified long-term benefits to local communities (Hooks, Mosher, Genter, Rotolo, & Lobao, 2010), legislators in distressed rural communities have nonetheless actively sought new prison construction in their home districts. Many of these policymakers have also been key sponsors of punitive sentencing legislation that would result in higher demand for prison bed space. In addition, as prison populations have begun to decline in some jurisdictions, there has been growing resistance to closing institutions that are no longer needed, in order to protect rural prison employment.

Policy Initiatives to Support Decarceration

While political initiatives to "get tough" on crime have frequently led to rising prison populations, conscious policy shifts can also produce decarceration. Perhaps the two most notable examples of nations that have moved in such a direction in recent decades are Finland and Germany.

In the 1950s, the Finnish rate of incarceration of approximately 200 per 100,000 was four times that of other Scandinavian nations (Lappi-Seppälä, 2001). Leading officials in the country became concerned about this vast gap and initiated a series of reforms over several decades. By the 1990s, the Finnish rate was the same as that of its neighbors. Tapio Lappi-Seppäläa traces these changes to an evolving ideology critiquing the notion of "coercive treatment" across the Nordic nations beginning in the 1960s. This philosophy led to declining faith in the power of criminal law as a means of social control, and resulting policy shifts included the decriminalization of public drunkenness, restrictions on the use of preventive detention, increased use of conditional sentences, and reduced penalties for theft. Despite a reduction in the rate of incarceration by more than half over a 40-year period, a comparison of crime trends in the four Nordic nations during this period showed a "striking similarity" among them (Lappi-Seppälä, 2001, p. 121).

A similar initiative was undertaken in West Germany during the period of rehabilitative optimism in the late 1960s. Legislation adopted in 1969 placed a heavy emphasis on the use of noncustodial sentences whenever feasible (Weigend, 2001). Measures included in the new law abolished prison sentences of less than one month, discouraged sentences of less than six months, and decriminalized many traffic and public order offenses. As a result, the number of prison admissions dropped dramatically from 136,000 in 1968 to 35,000 in 1976. The prison population decreased by 25% during this period. Although the number of prison terms imposed remained steady for the next two decades, the prison population then steadily increased, reaching its pre-reform level by the mid-1990s. An analysis of this increase suggests that the sharp reduction in short-term sentences was subsequently outpaced by an increase in sentences of two years or more.

Court decisions have, on occasion, resulted in substantial shifts in rates of incarceration as well. In the case of Brown v. Plata in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the level of overcrowding in the state of California was unconstitutional due to the inability of the state to provide an adequate level of health care in its facilities (Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S. 493, (2011)). Consequently, the Court ordered the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of design capacity within two years, representing a population reduction of more than 30,000. The state was able to comply with the order, in large part through a policy of Realignment, which generally directed that persons convicted of nonviolent offenses or parole violations no longer could be sent to state prison but instead would be supervised either in local jails or under probation. The initial results of the shift indicated no adverse effects on crime rates other than a modest increase in auto theft (Lofstrom & Raphael, 2016). An early assessment of how the population reduction affected overall decarceration, whether counties merely shifted incarceration to local jails, concluded that factors associated with decarceration "do not precisely mirror those of incarceration," suggesting the need for further exploration of these dynamics (Verma, 2016, p. 132).

Impact of High Rates of Incarceration

In recent decades, substantial increases in the use of incarceration in many nations have occurred, resulting in extreme cases of "mass incarceration." Imprisonment clearly is a profound life experience for the person who is incarcerated. But in societies that have produced particularly high levels of incarceration the impact of prison goes well beyond the individual and now affects his or her family and community in diverse ways. In the United States in particular, a growing body of scholarship is addressing these issues (Mauer & Chesney-Lind, 2002).

A first line of inquiry regarding the impact of high rates of incarceration concerns the effect of such developments on crime rates. The policies that have led to mass incarceration have generally been promoted with the rationale of addressing crime. This shift has variously been framed as being accomplished through general deterrence-"sending a message" to potential offenders-or incapacitation-"locking the door and throwing away the key."

While incarceration certainly has some effect on crime-if nothing else, through incapacitating high-rate offenders for a period of time-it is increasingly clear that high rates of incarceration produce diminishing returns for public safety. There are a number of reasons why this is the case. First, as the number of people imprisoned rises, there is a general tendency to lock up increasingly less serious offenders. For example, in a prison system of modest size, a justice system concerned with burglary crimes would likely target its resources to incarcerate high-rate offenders. But with an expanded availability of prison cells, no such prioritizing is necessary, and there is room to imprison both high-rate and low-rate offenders.

A review of data in the United States illustrates the significance of this factor (Canela-Cacho Blumstein, & Cohen, 1997). Researchers examined self-reported inmate data on frequency of offending in three states compiled in the late 1970s compared to offending rates of free offenders. They found sharp differences in the offending frequency of the two groups. Free robbery offenders reported committing an average of one to three robberies per year and free burglary offenders reported two to four burglaries annually, while incarcerated offenders reported offending rates 10 to 50 times higher. Thus, the incapacitation effect of expanded incarceration would be substantially lower because so many fewer offenses would be "prevented" as a result. Notably, these data are from the early years of the development of mass incarceration in the United States; therefore, the dramatic increases in prison populations in succeeding decades almost certainly produced substantial diminishing returns for public safety.

A second factor that limits the effect of incarceration on crime is the length of time spent in prison. For sentences of ten years or more, any crime control impact is offset by the "aging out" of crime process. Cross-national research shows that rates of engagement in criminal behavior, particularly for males, rise sharply in the late teenage years but then decline fairly rapidly by the mid- to late twenties (Weitekamp & Kerner, 1994). Thus, incarcerating offenders well into their thirties, forties, or fifties produce successively reduced gains for public safety. Clearly, corrections and parole officials need to make individualized determinations of risk, but as an overall policy matter, long prison terms certainly produce diminishing returns.

A comprehensive assessment of these issues in the United States was undertaken by the National Research Council. In their 2014 report on the causes and consequences of high rates of imprisonment, the panel concluded that the magnitude of the crime-reducing effect of incarceration was uncertain but that "the evidence suggests that it was unlikely to have been large" (National Research Council, 2014, p. 155).

Scholars have also addressed the potential counterproductive effects of high levels of incarceration. One such line of inquiry explores these effects in high incarceration neighborhoods, those in which a substantial portion of the population is imprisoned at any given moment. A study by Todd Clear and colleagues in Tallahassee, Florida found that at modest levels of incarceration there was a positive effect in reducing crime, but at higher levels the impact was actually counterproductive and contributed to increases in crime (Clear, Rose, Waring, & Scully 2003). They attribute this effect to the diminishing of informal social control mechanisms that serve to establish social norms and create bonds among family and community members. Another effect of high incarceration relates to its impact on family formation and child rearing. In Donald Braman's examination of the geographic disparity in imprisonment, he finds that in highly affected neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., there are only 62 adult men for every 100 adult women (Braman, 2002). Some of the "missing" men have died or are serving in the military, but many are incarcerated. Thus, the ability of women to find marriage and parenting partners is considerably diminished. Similar effects have been documented for increased rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies in areas of high rates of incarceration (Thomas & Torrone, 2006). These alterations come about due to imbalances in gender ratios, disruption of social networks and cohesion, and the resulting impact on community norms.

High rates of incarceration also adversely affect socioeconomic conditions in low-income communities of color. This conversion begins with the effect on wage earnings for people with a prison record. A review of the literature by the National Research Council finds that although the research does not uniformly find negative employment outcomes, "The balance of quantitative results points to the negative consequences of incarceration for employment" (National Research Council, 2014, p. 247), with studies frequently finding reductions in employment outcomes of 10% to 30%.

For the nation as a whole, economic output in the United States is likely to be affected through the "hidden unemployment" of those who are incarcerated as well as underemployment of those with felony convictions. A study of 2008 economic data estimated that due to poor employment prospects for individuals with criminal records the male employment rate was reduced by 1.5% to 1.7% that year, and that GDP output was reduced by $57 to $65 billion (Schmitt & Warner, 2010).

Finally, incarceration at any level raises issues of opportunity costs and questions of whether alternative investments of resources would produce different outcomes for public safety. This effect, as well, is exacerbated in nations with a high level of incarceration, where one can expect to see diminishing returns for public safety on a far larger scale than for nations with lower rates. A variety of research demonstrates that social intervention and substance-abuse treatment programs frequently produce more substantial public safety outcomes than does expanded imprisonment (Weisburd, Farrington, & Gill, 2016).

A Rational Rate of Incarceration

Given the wide variation among and within nations, the "right" rate of incarceration for a given nation remains debatable. The answer essentially depends on the goals of a particular society.

Just prior to the historic rise of the prison population in the United States, criminologists Alfred Blumstein and Jacqueline Cohen theorized that a society develops a "stability of punishment" that reflects its norms and reinforces social solidarity. Following the work of Durkheim and Erikson, and using data from the United States and Norway over several decades, they contended that "society tries to impose a fairly constant level of punishment" and that "the behavior it punishes responds to shifts in the behavior distribution" (Blumstein & Cohen, 1973, p. 207).

That article was published in 1973, the first year of the four-decade prison increase toward mass incarceration. These developments offer a strong challenge to the "stability of punishment" framework, but this conclusion may be misguided. Just as Blumstein and Cohen noted differences in the punishment thresholds between the United States and Norway, societies may evolve over time and establish societal norms that support greater or lesser scales of acceptable punishment. Pierre Tremblay suggests that "the stability hypothesis does not explain why penal evolution experiences normative revolutions. It does not deny that such normative revolutions occur; it claims only that the rate of punishment will be stable before and after these revolutions take place" (Tremblay, 1986, p. 177).

The late criminologist Nils Christie posed questions along these lines, focused on how much punishment a society should choose to impose. "When has a prison population in a country reached a level when at least our intuition says that this is wrong, completely wrong, unacceptable!" (Christie, 2004, p. 102) He answers with reference to basic human values, stating that if we believe in the values of kindness and forgiving, in keeping civil societies civil, and in living in cohesive, integrated societies, "then we ought to keep the institution of penal law a small one" (Christie, 2004, p. 105).

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The number of people disenfranchised due to a felony conviction has reduced by 24% since peaking in 2016, demonstrating clear momentum to reform America's restrictive and racially discriminatory voting laws.

Since 1997, 26 states and the District of Columbia have expanded voting rights to people living with felony convictions. As a result, over 2 million Americans have regained the right to vote.

The Sentencing Project launches Public Service Announcement urging Americans to "Wake Up" to 50-year mass incarceration crisis.

The number of people disenfranchised due to a felony conviction has reduced by 24% since peaking in 2016, demonstrating clear momentum to reform America's restrictive and racially discriminatory voting laws.

Since 1997, 26 states and the District of Columbia have expanded voting rights to people living with felony convictions. As a result, over 2 million Americans have regained the right to vote.

The Sentencing Project launches Public Service Announcement urging Americans to "Wake Up" to 50-year mass incarceration crisis.

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Incarceration Rates in an International Perspective - The Sentencing Project

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The incarceration rate is often interpreted as a measurement of the degree of punitiveness in a society, although it is an imperfect measurement.

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Pep rallies are supposed to be joyful, loud and unabashed. Having just turned 12 in the fall of 2017, Alan bubbled over with excitement ahead of his first rally at Deming Intermediate School in Deming, New Mexico, a small city near the Mexican border.

Classrooms aren't easy for Alan, his mother said. (We are using Alan's middle name to protect his privacy.) She described him as a gentle, soulful boy going through life with a collection of medical conditions including Tourette syndrome. His tics and shouts, all beyond his control, make him an easy target for bullies and, to some school staff, a problem student to be corrected.

At the rally that October day more than two years ago, Alan began stomping and shouting, cheering for his new school. The noise was too much for some classmates one bleacher row down from his.

The girls sitting there told school staff he was kicking them - a claim Alan and his mother, Juliet Moreno, deny.

"Everyone was doing it," Alan said recently, recalling that day several years ago. "I was just doing it too. What did I do?"

"You don't punish a child by denying them an education."
Raymond Pierce, president of the Southern Education Foundation

Nevertheless, the meeting in the principal's office that followed ended with Alan suspended.

"My son loves school. He loves to learn," Moreno said. "He was crying on the way home, saying, 'I don't want to miss school, Mom.' "

It wasn't meant to be a day for tears, but there Alan was, a tall, sturdy boy with thick black hair and wet cheeks, sobbing in the passenger seat of his mom's Buick.

Alan was suspended for three days that time. A scuffle a few months later, Moreno said, netted him a week out of school and a visit from police at their home. School officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Moreno worries about how schoolhouse sanctions could put her son on a path toward the criminal justice system. She's right to be concerned.

Most American children who age into the criminal justice system do so in middle school - every state allows for the prosecution of children as young as 12, though most set the threshold earlier, or not at all - and suspension from school is predictive of incarceration later in life. For Black, Native and Latino boys, like Alan, research by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights shows the impact to be especially severe.

And while the pandemic closed middle schools across the country, it doesn't appear to have shut down school discipline. It is too soon to have firm data on suspensions, expulsions and school-based arrests during the pandemic, but some experts working directly with children of color say police are now often just sent to kids' homes.

Amanda Gallegos, a staffer with SouthWestOrganizing Project in Albuquerque, which aims to empower disenfranchised communities, said the middle schoolers she works with are struggling.

Electives and school activities have been curtailed, said Gallegos, a field organizer whose work includes running youth programs and political actions. School discipline, she said, has been handed to police, who make "welfare checks" on students who miss online classes.

"Middle school, that's when you're figuring out how to be a human," Gallegos said. "We always call it the equalizer," she said, adding that middle school tends to be a crummy experience for most people.
Related: If schools don't overhaul discipline, 'teachers will still be calling the police on our Black students'
Both suspensions and arrests have been on a downward track after peaking in the mid-1990s, but hundreds of thousands of boys of color are subjected to both every year.

Some lament that decline and the apparent shift to relatively unproven alternatives. In a recent survey drawing responses from 1,219 teachers and conducted by the charter schools advocacy organization the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an overwhelming majority of teachers viewed suspension and expulsion as useful to keep classrooms safe.

Softer, more holistic approaches to school discipline have nonetheless been gaining traction in schools nationally for the past two decades, but experts worry the shift is too slow. If the changes aren't accelerated, they say, the risk of abandoning too many of this generation's Black, Latino and Native children to the justice system remains high.

A middle schooler who has been suspended is, by some estimates, nearly four times more likely to end up convicted compared to demographically identical peers. Students suspended or expelled early in adolescence are often shunted into remedial classes and never returned to the mainstream. That means they're not "reading Mark Twain and Shakespeare and Maya Angelou," taking algebra or learning world history, said Raymond Pierce, president of the Southern Education Foundation. Some lose interest, drop out or wind up in jail.

Disruptive behavior must be dealt with, said Pierce, whose organization formed to help educate freed Black people after the Civil War. But he worries suspensions make things worse.

Over 60 percent - The proportion of Black seventh graders who were suspended in a single year at two Atlanta middle schools.

"You don't punish a child by denying them an education," Pierce continued. "The appropriate thing to do is meet the child where he or she is."

Particularly galling both to experts and parents, discipline doled out in middle school often punishes behaviors that are entirely appropriate for 11- to 14-year-olds.

"If you just hang around middle school kids, you'll see them pushing and shoving each other," said Melissa Sickmund, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice. "If adults do that, it is assault. But if it's happening in a school and there's no blood ... that kid does not need to be arrested."

Many of the systems aimed at America's youth are out of sync with the science, according to a report released in 2013 by the National Research Council. The study's authors pointed to a fluke of anatomical development - parts of the brain influencing pleasure-seeking and emotional responses grow faster than parts supporting self control.

"It's not just a refusal to do right, it's that inability that's part of their development," Sickmund said.

The lag becomes especially apparent in middle school, when children start really roughing one another up. Normal adolescent behavior, Sickmund said, winds up criminalized. While the impression is that high schoolers are more "crime-prone," she said, middle school is when students are most at risk of arrest for non-injurious assaults.

For Black boys and other children of color the increased the risk of being punished at school begins as early as preschool, according to government data. And by middle school, the school-to-prison pipeline for Black, Latino and Native children can be unsparingly direct.

Local news headlines paint the picture: In August 2019, a police officer at a Farmington, New Mexico, middle school declared he'd "had enough" after an 11-year-old brushed by a school administrator on her way through a door. Officer Zachary Christensen, who was later convicted of child abuse in the attack and sentenced to probation, slammed the girl to the concrete outside her middle school and handcuffed her as school staff looked on. Appearing in a New Mexico court on Jan. 14, Christensen apologized, explaining, " I'm not a social worker and the way I was trained was how I responded."
Related: Is the pandemic our chance to reimagine education for students with disabilities?

In January 2019, a Columbia, Missouri, girl arrested by mistake after a fight in her middle school's hallway was jailed overnight. A video of the altercation, reviewed after she was jailed, showed she wasn't involved.

Generations of advocates for Black students have made claims of broad racial prejudice among educators, an assertion that has been borne out by research. Studies have shown teachers are as biased against Black people as American society is broadly, and that school staff are likely to misread the expressions of Black children, seeing anger where there is none. Black students are also disproportionately punished for breaking dress codes and disobeying hairstyle restrictions and other minor misbehavior.

Sixty miles east of Los Angeles, "C" has been handcuffed four times by police at his middle school. (We are using C's first initial to protect his privacy.) During one October 2019 arrest caught on the officer's body camera, a Moreno Valley Unified School District officer knelt on C's neck after dragging the 70-pound sixth-grader away from his desk in a special education classroom.

The 11-year-old's alleged infraction? Throwing a rock near an officer the day before.

Body camera footage taken by a police officer at Moreno Valley Unified School District in suburban Los Angeles show officers dragging "C," a 70-pound sixth-grader, away from his desk. The boy's father, William, said he's afraid police could kill his son.

Speaking about the violence of his son's schoolhouse arrest, C's father, William, reflected on the tragedy that might've been. Months later, reckless force by police against another Black person, George Floyd, would end in a killing that shook the nation.

"I refused to let him go back to that school," said William, who asked to be referred to only by his first name to protect his son's privacy. "I feared for his life. I didn't want to put him in another situation where the outcome could be worse."

Like Alan, the New Mexico boy, C qualifies for special education. Officers placed at the schools aren't trained to interact with children who have disabilities, C's parents and their attorneys contend, and showed no compassion or skill in interactions with C.

C was kept handcuffed in a squad car for more than an hour before he was taken to a police station, according to a formal complaint made against the school district by attorneys representing the family.
Related: 'I can't do this anymore': How four middle schoolers are struggling through the pandemic
C has since enrolled in a new school and has been doing well with distance learning, but William said the damage is lasting. He said his son, who dreamed as a kindergartner of becoming a police officer, no longer sleeps well and often comments that "everybody thinks he's bad."

"They put the children in a wrong state of mind," William said of police officers in schools. "It makes them think they're in a detention center or something like that."

Moreno's son Alan has avoided arrest, but only just. Police have popped in on their meetings with school staff. One day, Alan made comments at school that alarmed a teacher. Hours later, police officers were outside the Moreno home.

School staff members' responses to Alan's Tourette syndrome cut deepest, Moreno said. The syndrome is a neurological condition characterized by involuntary tics and, in rare cases, including Alan's, profane outbursts. The best medicine is counterintuitive - if those nearby just ignore his occasional flinch or shout, he can just roll with them.

Instead, Alan has been bullied by peers and ostracized by school staff, said Moreno, who, with her attorney Gail Stewart, has taken administrative legal action against the school district.

Stewart describes a decision pattern she's seen repeated countless times in her 21 years representing students with disabilities. What's deemed in early elementary school as an academic deficit - difficulty reading, say - necessitating assistance is by middle school recast as a behavioral problem requiring correction. Discipline follows.

"The kids are struggling," Stewart said. "They either shut down or act out."

Toward the end of seventh grade, Alan was moved into a classroom by himself and taught by an aide. He wept when his mother told him he was being sequestered.

"Because I'm a single mom, we're a team," Moreno said. "This was the first time I had to lie to him. ... I said, 'We'll make it cool.' "

11 - The age of one California boy violently arrested by campus police officers inside his middle school special education classroom.

Related: Thousands of families in special education limbo
The only other sweetener Moreno could offer was that the bullying would stop. Inside, the soft-spoken mother of two said, she felt like screaming.

Alan ended up spending much of eighth grade alone, too. Moreno said Alan overheard staff talking about him, suggesting, as a police officer did, that he was faking his disability.

"As an educator, I'm just appalled," said Moreno, a bilingual speech pathologist of 18 years.

Suspensions increased steadily from the late 1980s through the 2011-12 school year and then fell precipitously, dropping 20 percent by the 2013-14 school year, according to a 2019 report to Congress by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Yet Latino, Native and multiracial middle schoolers are still disciplined at higher than average rates, and the risk that classroom misbehavior ends in a suspension or a court date is acute for Black students. A study that tracked nearly 1 million Texas seventh graders found Black students disciplined for some infractions at rates 31 percent above the norm. Researchers at UCLA found suspension rates among Black middle school students were double the average; in a single year at two Atlanta middle schools, more than 60 percent of Black boys were suspended.

Until 2018, suspensions and arrests were commonplace at Woodland Hills Junior Senior High School, then the educational home to most seventh and eighth graders in the 3,800-student district in suburban Pittsburgh. Woodland Hills gained notoriety after a 2015 incident that saw a school-based police officer throw a 15-year-old boy to a hallway floor and, with the principal's help, shock him with a Taser for talking back to a teacher.

Violent encounters like this one in 2015 between a police officer and a 15-year-old student at Woodland Hills High School in suburban Pittsburgh prompted a new slate of leaders to restrict and ultimately remove police officers from the school.

Suspensions, expulsions and arrests were pervasive in the district, where students of color currently comprise 72 percent of the student body. Its elementary-level suspension rates were among the nation's highest.

Change came when a newly elected school board brought in a new superintendent, James Harris.

Harris, a former military police officer, corporate marketer and restaurateur, was a school administrator in demand in the summer of 2018. When the dynamic, detail-oriented Black schools leader chose troubled Woodland Hills, he said, his friends wondered why.

Two years later, he had radically restructured the district. A rundown alternative school and a divisive magnet school were closed, elementary school enrollment rules were reset and a middle school was built. And on-campus police were phased out.

"The high school principal and I always talk about how we're fighting history," Harris said. "But we figure that every day is a new day that we're adding to our history."

"We're fighting history. But we figure that every day is a new day that we're adding to our history."
James Harris, Woodland Hills School District superintendent

The "real change" for middle schoolers, Harris said, was a shift in the district's school discipline policies. When students are pulled from class now, the staffer who deals with them must return with them to that class so the student may ask for permission to come back. This gives the teacher control and shows the rest of the class the student has remorse.

The 2019-20 school year passed without a single expulsion, and disciplinary referrals in the district have fallen 70 percent, Harris said, freeing teachers to work with students on academics. He believes those connections have changed the culture.

"They say, 'You treat us like real people, '" Harris said of the students he's met. "Well, you are real people."

Moreno wonders who will see her son that way, as a person whole and worthy, not incomplete or threatening.

The pandemic has kept Alan, now 15, and his 14-year-old brother home. Remote high school is going poorly. Heading into the winter break, Alan had straight F's.
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Alan said it's hard for him to focus in class, though he's glad the teachers call on him more than they did in middle school. He enjoys mariachi class - he plays guitar in the band - and golf team, which he enjoys for the quiet and companionship. Alan looks forward to returning to the classroom. His friends are in the honors classes, and he doesn't get to see much of them.

Alan said he wants to work with computers as an adult. Or maybe in real estate. Or maybe, joking with his mom, he'll become a traveling hair stylist to the stars like a man he saw on TikTok.

He wants a career, friendship and a full life, hopes that his mom shares despite middle school's setbacks. But Moreno also worries that the way Alan was treated then, as someone to be protected against and shuffled aside, may presage the years ahead.

"Even the people who know he has what he has, the teachers, they call the police on him," Moreno said of her eldest son. "I worry a lot about his future."

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When typical middle school antics mean suspensions, handcuffs or jail

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox Pep rallies are supposed to be joyful, loud and unabashed. Having just turned 12 in the fall of 2017, Alan bubbled over with excitement ahead of his first rally at Deming Intermediate School in Deming, New Mexico, a small city near the Mexican border.