NCJ Number
247423
Date Published
April 2014
Length
40 pages
Annotation
This analysis of Virginia's criminal justice policy documents an excessive punitiveness that has been costly and ineffective.
Abstract
Since the 1970s, Virginia has experienced a 735-percent increase in the prison population. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that Virginia had the Nation's 15th highest State imprisonment rate, with 451 per 100,000 State residents imprisoned. This has been costly, as there has been a 288-percent increase in corrections spending since the 1980s. In addition to the costly use of incarceration, Virginia's communities are not safer, but have experienced adverse consequences, including racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration, high concentrations of felony disenfranchisement in the African-American community (offenders and ex-offenders cannot vote), and other consequences associated with removing parents from their children, taking earners for families from their jobs, and increasing barriers to the development of a beneficial life in the community. This costly and often ineffective response to crime has been fueled by policymaking that has produced a reduction in "good-time" and earned-time credits, a push for more mandatory minimum prison sentences, the criminalization of an increasing number of behaviors, and the elimination of parole. Recommendations are to reconsider and review sentencing laws, practices, and policies; reduce the adverse collateral consequences associated with criminal convictions and imprisonment; and adopt more effective drug policies. Figures, tables, appendix, and endnotes