The end of mass incarceration: opportunities for reform

Beginning in the 1970s, the United States embarked on a four-decade-long policy of locking up more and more people yearly. Before starting, the nation’s incarceration rate had remained flat since 1925. Scholars discussed the “stability of punishment and the prospects for decarceration.” Suddenly, these conversations seemed quaint. Writing in 1985, Elliott Currie was shocked that the state and federal prison population had doubled to 450,000. A decade later, Todd Clear documented that this figure had almost doubled again, reaching 850,000 inmates. He called this surge “astounding,” but it proved like a number on an automobile odometer, quickly surpassed. It took until 2009 for the state and federal prison population to peak at 1.54 million. When all forms of incarceration were included (for example, jail residents), the count reached 2.29 million. The nation’s incarcerated population has since trended downward. The decline in 2010 was tiny—0.4 percent for state and federal prisoners and 1.1 percent for those incarcerated—but it was a harbinger of things to come. The era of mass incarceration, however, involved more than numbers; it involved a change in focus from the rehabilitative to the punitive ideal.