Next Steps in Jail and Prison Downsizing

• Published date: 01 August 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12383
• Date: 01 August 2018

POLICY ESSAY

DOWNSIZING OUR PRISONS AND JAILS

Next Steps in Jail and Prison Downsizing

Ryken Grattet

University of California, Davis, and the Public Policy Institute

of California

Mia Bird

University of California, Berkeley, and the Public Policy Institute

of California

According to the results of the National Prisoner Survey (Carson, 2018), incar-

ceration in state and federal prisons fell by 108,406 inmates between 2010 and

2016. It is tempting to assume that this decrease in incarceration reflects decreases

in felony crime. Although it is true that felony crime has continued its three-decade-long

downward trend, research findings on the relationship between crime and incarceration

have shown that more often than not, the two bear little relationship to one another (Travis,

Western,and Redburn, 2014). Some portion of the decline in incarceration is likely because

of discretionary decisions within the criminal justice system by law enforcement, prosecu-

tors, judges, and correctional officials. In other words, declines are sometimes the result of

changes in practice that, for example, alter law enforcement decisions about arrests, prose-

cutors’ decisions about charging,1and parole and probation decisions about who to revoke

into custody rather than big “P” policy changes ordered by courts or enacted by legislatures

or through ballot initiatives. Policy changes like the adoption of mandatory minimums

and sentence enhancements, however, were clearly drivers of prison incarceration growth

in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a result, policy changes are an important focus of the

decarceration movement unfolding now. Policies are also important because they represent

the levers available to policy makers and citizens to influence the ways the correctional

system operates.

California, the focus of Bradley Bartos and Charis Kubrin’s (2018, this issue) study of

the consequences of prison and jail downsizing, is an important site to explore the impacts

Direct correspondence to Ryken Grattet, Department of Sociology, One Shields Avenue, University of

California, Davis, CA 95616 (e-mail: rtgrattet@ucdavis.edu).

1. In fact, Pfaff (2014), in his work on incarceration growth, contended that prosecutors’ discretionary

charging decisions increased the length of sentences and drove massive increases in incarceration in

the 1980s and 1990s.

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12383 C2018 American Society of Criminology 717

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 17 rIssue 3