1940s–Early 1970: The prison population was largely stable at around 200,000 per year, leading some to argue for a “theory of the stability of punishment,” suggesting that society reaches a level of punishment with which it is comfortable and then adjusts policies to maintain it.
The Prison Explosion: Timeline of Events
1940s–Early 1970: The prison population was largely stable at around 200,000 per year, leading some to argue for a “theory of the stability of punishment,” suggesting that society reaches a level of punishment with which it is comfortable and then adjusts policies to maintain it. The public supported rehabilitation, and the system of indeterminate sentencing was designed to allow an inmate to be rehabilitated. Indeterminate sentencing was applied throughout the country as it had been for almost 100 years, judges applied a minimum and maximum term of imprisonment, and inmates were eligible for parole, with the parole authority having discretion to determine when the sentence would be ended. However, liberals criticized this system for its potential for abuse of discretion, including wide variations in practice and bias in terms of race and gender. The conservative approach was to challenge indeterminate sentencing as allowing early release of offenders who ought to serve a longer sentence. Conservatives also questioned the value of rehabilitation.
1960s: Crime rates began to rise for reasons that remain unclear; however, one factor might have been the coming of age of the baby boom generation, bringing an unprecedented number of young males into society’s mainstream. There was an epidemic of heroin addiction in urban areas. This was a time of social unrest centered on the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. Urban unrest and public protests and demonstrations became treated as forms of criminality, and public fears about disorder mounted. The feminist movement focused on protection and safety, adding to the concern about crime and unrest and giving more focus to incarceration.
1964: In his presidential campaign, Barry Goldwater made crime a signature issue in politics for the first time.
1967: The Safe Streets Act enlarged the federal role in crime control and made funding available to the states to purchase hardware and to upgrade technology. This resulted in higher rates of crime reporting.
1972: Federal and state prison populations totaled 196,000, with another 130,000 held in jails. This gave an overall incarceration rate of about 160 per 100,000.
1973: The prison population began to increase. New York passed the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, the harshest in the country, which imposed mandatory prison terms for drug offenses and set the stage for later tough antidrug laws.
1974: The publication of the essay “Nothing Works” by Robert Martinson and his colleagues following their review of juvenile and adult rehabilitation programs gave wide publicity to the notion that rehabilitation did not work. (Martinson’s finding was challenged at the time, and he later renounced it). The effect of this and other factors was that liberals and conservatives both now favored a determinate sentencing system with decreased rehabilitation, although for different reasons. However, liberals favored short determinate sentences and conservatives long sentences.
Late 1970s: Cocaine became a widely used illicit drug. States began to pass laws that set mandatory terms of incarceration. Utah adopted sentencing guidelines to curtail judicial discretion in sentencing.
1980s: Crack cocaine, much cheaper to buy than cocaine, became widely used. In 1980, Minnesota adopted sentencing guidelines.
1980: The election of Ronald Reagan as president reinforced the movement to be “tough on crime.” An individual pathology approach to crime was adopted and no regard given to structural social and economic factors in crime causation. Desiring to enlarge the federal role in crime control, the Reagan administration decided to enhance the existing war against drugs by federalizing it.
1982: Congress authorized $125 million to create 12 new regional drug task forces, staffed by more than 1,000 federal law enforcement personnel from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and federal prosecutors.
1984: The Sentencing Reform Act established a Federal Sentencing Commission. In 1987, the commission’s guidelines took effect. They stipulated a heavy presumption of imprisonment and little regard for mitigating factors. The guidelines were considered mandatory until 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled they were advisory only. Nevertheless, in the period from 1987 to 2005, many states adopted the federal guidelines, ensuring long sentences would be imposed.
1986: The war on drugs began to severely impact the criminal justice system as prosecutions increased. Following media frenzy around the growth in the use of crack cocaine, more “get tough” measures were proposed and introduced.
1988: The Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed, prescribing even more mandatory sentences and declaring its objective to be a “Drug-Free America by 1995.” George H. Bush’s election campaign for president used the Willie Horton incident to give a focus to getting tough on crime.
1988: Following the election of George H. Bush as president, the Department of Justice continued its policy of playing a leading role in campaigning for more punitive crime-control policies.
1992: The publication of Combating Violent Crime: 24 Recommendations to Strengthen Criminal Justice by the attorney general recommended more mandatory minimum penalties and building more prisons. The election of Bill Clinton as president brought more get-tough measures. Clinton’s campaign strategy included a stance of never being less tough on crime than Republicans. At this point, the crime rate and violent crime began a steady decline.
1993: Under the Reagan and Bush administrations between 1980 and 1993, corrections spending increased by 521%. By 1993, some practitioners and government officials were showing concern at the growth of the prison population and were beginning to debate alternatives to incarceration; this brought attention to racial disparities in criminal justice. However, this trend abruptly reversed due to the efforts of the media and the law-and-order lobby and through political appropriations of the crime-control issue. In Washington State, the first “three strikes and you’re out” law was passed, requiring life without parole for three violent felonies.
1994: The Clinton administration passed its crime bill, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which included a federal “three strikes” provision and a $30 billion funding package for more prisons and law enforcement. Almost $8 billion was appropriated for prison construction, and states were required to adopt tougher laws to qualify for funding. “Truth in sentencing” provisions required that inmates serve at least 85% of their sentences before release. Only at the end of his second term did President Clinton call for a reexamination of mandatory minimum penalties for nonviolent offenders and removal of the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and cocaine powder. By the late 1990s, the public had begun to recognize that crime rates were declining, and crime no longer figured as a central issue in most political dialogue.
2000: The election of George W. Bush as president on a platform that included “compassionate conservatism” did not bring about radical change. Despite statements about crack cocaine and lengthy drug sentences that suggested changes might be forthcoming to slow prison growth, this did not occur, and plans for prisoner reentry programs, for example, received little of the promised funding. The overall approach to crime continued to be punitive.
2001–2005: Attorney General John Ashcroft overruled prosecutors who recommended noncapital prosecutions. The U.S. Sentencing Commission was ordered to ensure that lesser sentences than those required by the sentencing guidelines (“downward departures”) were substantially reduced, and federal prosecutors were directed not to agree to downward departures generally unless a case was exceptional and to report nonsanctioned departures to the attorney general. These measures exacerbated an already punitive punishment system. Overall, the prison explosion was consolidated, and no substantive moves were made to ameliorate its nature and effects.
2007: Under fiscal pressure, some states reviewed their prison costs and looked for ways to reduce them. However, there was no radical reconfiguration in the existing punishment policies at state or federal levels, despite a continuously decreasing crime rate.
2010: Congress finally changed the 25-year law mandating a sentence for possession of crack cocaine equivalent to the prison term for trafficking 100 times the amount of powder cocaine and reduced the ratio to 18:1 rather than 100:1. The legislation also eliminated the mandatory five-year prison sentence for first-time offenders. The largest decline in the prison population—2.1%—was recorded. However, in 2013, the decline was only 0.6%.
2013: About 1 in 35 adults in the United States was under some form of correctional supervision, and 1 in 51 adults on probation or parole. The U.S. federal prison population decreased for the first time since 1980 (down 1,900). Since 2010, the female prison population has been the fastest-growing category of inmates, increasing by an average of 3.4% each year.
2015: In June, three states presented to Congress recent sentencing and corrections reforms; since 2007, more than half the states have carried out reforms that have assisted in stabilizing the incarceration rate. Reforms include prioritizing prison space for serious and repeat felons and promoting alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders. South Dakota has canceled construction of two new prisons, and Utah has strengthened probation and parole and invested in reentry programs designed to reduce recidivism for released offenders (Pew Charitable Trusts 2015).
2016: In a report on “California’s Historic Corrections Reforms,” the Public Policy Institute of California noted that the state’s spending on corrections was $10.6 billion—9% more than in 2010–2011, despite measures that had reduced the total incarcerated population by almost 55,000 inmates since 2006; that most offenders with no previous convictions for serious, violent, or sexual crimes now served their sentences in county jail or under probation supervision and not in prisons; that parole violators generally served terms not exceeding six months in county jails, or receive other local sanctions; and that the state had reduced penalties for some drug and property offenses by reclassifying them as misdemeanors.
2017: The Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Package released in March 2017 followed a year’s work by a task force of justice professionals. It aims to reduce the state’s prison population by 10% over the next ten years and save $262 million. The bulk of the savings will be invested in programs and policies that will reduce recidivism and support crime victims. Currently, the state spends about $700 million a year on corrections, but one in three inmates return to prison within three years. Louisiana currently incarcerates offenders convicted of nonviolent offenses at 1.5 to 3 times the rate of neighboring states and leads the nation in the rate of imprisonment.
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