Jail populations shrink but growing problems remain

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Last week, federal officials announced a decrease in our nation’s jail population for the first time since 1982. This comes at a time when overall crime is down despite this being the worst economic recession in decades. Although the announced decrease in jail population is a promising bit of news, reactions should be measured.

The US is 5 percent of the world’s population and has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Over the last 30 years, the US criminal justice system experienced the second largest increase in government investment, second only to health care. Last year, as state budget shortfalls loomed, 31 states cut education budgets while increasing money for incarceration.

Unless we support ongoing efforts to downscale prisons and jails, our country will literally go broke and funds for other public sector ventures will dry up.

We cannot read too much into the downturn in people jailed. Without changes to policies responsible for high rates of incarceration, any down turn in incarceration can fluctuate and even spike back up.

What the federal government failed to mention, is that during the same time period the country experienced a decrease in jail population, jail space created through expansion projects reached an all time high. The capacity for all jails nationwide reached 849,544 beds at midyear 2009, up more than 2000 from 12 months earlier.

Only when cities, states and the federal government follow the lead of New York, Michigan, and Seattle by systematically changing how the criminal justice system works, will there be reason to believe that a significant downturn in prison population can be sustained.

Policymakers in those states are meeting the challenges by narrowing who goes to jail, reducing the length of time a person is incarcerated and are creating alternative to incarceration opportunities for individuals addicted to drugs and or have mental health problems.

In efforts to reduce low-level drug offenders serving time, legislators in New York significantly reduced and nearly eliminated the state’s notorious Rockefeller drug laws. In Michigan, lawmakers eliminated mandatory minimums for certain drug offenses. In Seattle, local police departments and the public defenders association are piloting the Law Enforcement Assisted Diverson Program(LEAD), where police can opt into sending an offender to a pre-arrest diversion program and help a person get treatment instead of going to jail.

These are all strategies that have helped facilitate a downturn in the jail population and these are all policies that share in the success of reducing crime.

It is time to call for more strategies that meet the need of communities and repudiate the mindset of incarceration as the primary means of accomplishing public safety. The decrease in jail at the same time of decreasing crime rates is a good start, but in many ways, the work has just begun.