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<span class="post_date" title="2015-09-22">September 22, 2015</span>
<h1 class="headline" itemprop="name"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/22/the-politics-of-mass-incarceration-mass-incarceration-latest-stats-show-nano-scale-reform-remains-the-dominant-trend/"
rel="bookmark">The Politics of Mass Incarceration: Mass
Incarceration: Latest Stats Show Nano-Scale Reform Remains the
Dominant Trend</a></h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/james-kilgore/"
rel="nofollow">James Kilgore</a></span> </p>
<div class="post_content" itemprop="articleBody"><b><small><small><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/22/the-politics-of-mass-incarceration-mass-incarceration-latest-stats-show-nano-scale-reform-remains-the-dominant-trend/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/22/the-politics-of-mass-incarceration-mass-incarceration-latest-stats-show-nano-scale-reform-remains-the-dominant-trend/</a></small></small></small></small></small></b><br>
<p>Last week the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) published
their annual census of the nation’s prison population. After
over three decades of uninterrupted yearly increases, 2014 was
the fourth year in the last five in which the total number of
people in Federal and state prisons fell. The figure declined
from 1,576,950 to 1,561,525, a drop of about 1%. The some
700,000 people held in local jails were not included in these
stats.</p>
<p>This news from the BJS will please those who see opportunity in
the increasing acknowledgement of mass incarceration in the
political sphere. Proclamations by the President, Hillary
Clinton as well as statements by arch-conservative forces as
diverse as Rand Paul, Newt Gingrich and the Koch brothers have
placed criminal justice on the electoral agenda. In 2012 no
candidate made even passing mention of the two million people in
the US behind bars. For anyone seeking to reverse the debacle of
the US’ incarceration obsession, any decrease in the number of
people behind bars is welcome. Yet a closer look at the BJS
stats shows that reform remains miniscule. The overall landscape
reflects the ongoing tension between the continuity of mass
incarceration and the need for change. The data actually remind
us that the fate of the criminal justice system has yet to be
decided.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there is a bit of good news in these numbers.
Sentencing reform at the national level, along with other
changes, did contribute to a fall in the Federal prison
population of just over 5,000. However, even with this drop,
Federal facilities still held 2,449 more people at the end of
2014 than they did in 2009. Moreover, media pundits often fail
to note that the Feds hold only about 14% of the nation’s
prisoners. Action by the Congress or even from the President has
little impact on the state-based departments of corrections
which house 86% of prisoners.</p>
<p>At the state level, the surprising star of decarceration for
2014 was Mississippi. Through a combination of numerous reforms,
many encapsulated in HB 585, the state prison population fell by
a whopping 14.5%, amounting to about 20% of the national fall.
While noteworthy, this performance was largely driven by one-off
changes in sentencing and parole which won’t<br>
<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1620970678/counterpunchmaga"><img
class="alignright wp-image-74330"
src="cid:part3.01090603.03060406@freedomarchives.org"
alt="61HFKSwNxsL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_" height="233"
width="233"></a>continue to yield massive annual reductions.
Yet, even with a 14.5% fall, Mississippi remains the fifth
highest state in terms of per capita incarceration rates. There
is still a long way to go in Jackson.</p>
<p>When we turn our attention to other states, a mixed picture
emerges, particularly if we move our lens away from a simple
focus on year-on-year national figures. For 2014, out of the 49
states recorded, 31 showed changes of 2% or less, 15 of 1% or
less. More importantly, not all populations declined . While 26
states showed decreases, 23 upped their populations, with
Arizona leading the way by adding more than 1000 prisoners to
its carceral rolls. Examining state trends since the peak
national prison population of 2009 shows a similarly uneven
result. During that time the national prison population fell by
just over 52,000 or about 3.5%. Yet 26 states have increased
their prison populations since 2009. A closer look at the
declines during that period reveals that California accounted
for about 35,000 of that national drop. The California
reductions came about largely due to a response to a Federal
court order to decarcerate. But even the California cutbacks
contain hidden contradictions, since many of those in state
prisons were simply moved to county jails or transferred to out
of state private facilities rather than released. Furthermore,
to accommodate that change California has allocated $500 million
to counties for jail expansion as well as putting together
financial packages. More people behind bars in the future looks
to be in the cards for California.</p>
<p>In the long-term, only two states have demonstrated a serious
commitment to decarceration: New York and New Jersey. Since
2000, the New York state prison census has decreased every year
but one. Relaxed drug law enforcement combined with massive
diversion of people into programs rather than jail has led to
the closure of 11 prisons in the state and an overall fall in
the incarcerated population of about 25%. New Jersey has
followed a similar path, producing a population decline of 24%
in the same period. Still, New York and New Jersey are outliers.
The dominant trend remains a politically expedient perpetuation
of the status quo. If the national prison population continues
to fall at the rate of 1%, Marc Mauer, Director of the
Sentencing Project has estimated it will take 88 years to reach
per capita rates of 1980. The polar ice caps are melting faster
than our prison system is shrinking.</p>
<p>Ultimately, policy talk about mass incarceration in most
quarters glosses over the real challenges. Politicians may take
the lead in proclaiming the success of their sentencing reforms
or new policies on parole, but a deeper look shows that we have
not come very far and much of what is on the table will not take
us much farther. While the “tough on crime” approach captured
the hearts, minds and budgetary allocations of every state
legislature and department of corrections in the 1980s, the
critique of prison expansion and carceral over spending has not
garnered a similar national or local consensus. The rhetoric
about the evils mass incarceration may be proliferating but it
is not accompanied by the kind of media efforts to popularize
the issue that characterized the 1980s. In those days, even
Michael Jackson was doing ads for the War on Drugs. Without a
concerted effort to create mind set change, contradictory,
underfunded nano-scale reform will remain the order of the day.</p>
<p>At the practical level, transformative change requires at least
two things which are not on the agenda in most states. First
comes the recognition that we cannot significantly reduce prison
populations by concentrating on those with non-violent drug
cases. This cohort constitutes about 16% of the state prison
population. Ending mass incarceration means taking
responsibility for the fact that mass incarceration has locked
people up unfairly in a systematic way. The majority of those
behind bars are not there because of bad personal choices. Legal
and policy frameworks as well as budget cuts have been
formulated to make the pipeline to prison their most likely
path. Absurdly long sentences and disproportionate charging need
to be re-visited and addressed with retroactive measures to free
those who have already served far longer than any just system
should reasonably punish them.</p>
<p>Second, political leaders and the public at large need to
recognize that genuinely reversing mass incarceration will not
save billions of dollars. We need to undo the harm done to
millions of people who have been wrongly imprisoned for
excessive terms and to the communities from which they come.
These communities have suffered the punishment of population
loss, over-policing and cutbacks in social service provision.
Mass incarceration has come hand in hand with mass
criminalization of poverty, mass immiseration. Addressing this
means closing prisons and jails and ploughing the money saved
into an urban, anti-racist “New Deal” process to provide public
housing, substance abuse treatment, mental health services and
employment opportunities to the millions who have been
negatively impacted by the war-like policies of law enforcement
and corrections across the country. Ending mass incarceration
ultimately must come hand in hand with, dare I say it, a new
war- one against poverty , inequality and the notion that
excessive punishment makes us safe.</p>
<p> </p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>James Kilgore</strong>
is a writer and activist based in Urbana, Illinois. He spent
six and a half years in prison. During those years, he drafted
three novels which have been published since his release in
2009. His latest book, </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1620970678/counterpunchmaga">Understanding
Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights
Struggle of Our Era</a><em> will be published by The New Press
in September. He can be contacted at <a
href="mailto:waazn1@gmail.com"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:waazn1@gmail.com">waazn1@gmail.com</a></a></em> </p>
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