Reducing the Rate of U.S. Incarceration One State at a Time

• Author: Gerald G. Gaes
• Date: 01 August 2018
• Published date: 01 August 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12381

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

DOWNSIZING OUR PRISONS AND JAILS

Reducing the Rate of U.S. Incarceration One

State at a Time

California and the Impact of Proposition 47

Gerald G. Gaes

Florida State University

More than any other topic, mass incarceration is the preeminent public policy

issue that reaches beyond our small community of criminologists. Aside from

the large body of criminal justice scholarship devoted to this issue, it is a

topic debated by politicians and policy makers and rehashed by pundits eager to advance a

specific position. It is quintessential criminology touching on many domains both theoret-

ical and practical—life-course research, public safety, justice, racial inequality, community

cohesiveness, and state budgeting and finance decisions. The latter encompasses trade-offs

between the funding of expensive prison resources and other state and federally funded so-

cial programs including higher education, welfare, and medical care. The National Research

Council report by Travis, Western, and Redburn (2014) on mass incarceration highlighted

collateral social costs including those to the offender’s family, community, and the U.S.

polity.

Mass incarceration calls attention to a form of exceptionalism most Americans prefer

not to brag about. We have been at or near the top of the rate of incarceration among the

world’s countries for many years. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research documents

worldwide incarceration rates. Adding inmates in federal and state prisons as well as local

jails, the United States had an incarceration rate of 666 per 100,00 in 2015, which was

down from its peak of 755 per 100,000 in 2008 (Jacobson, Heard, and Fair, 2017). We are

currently second to the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean

with 100,00 residents and 799 people in custody. We are still an outlier among modern

nation states (Walmsley, 2015). The downward trend in U.S. incarceration since 2008 is

much less steep than the growth that drove it to its unprecedented levels. To drive prison

Direct correspondence to Gerald G. Gaes, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University,

Eppes Hall, 112 S. Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1273 (e-mail: ggaes@comcast.net).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12381 C2018 American Society of Criminology 689

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 17 rIssue 3