NCJ Number
141985
Date Published
1993
Length
27 pages
Annotation
Between 1980 and 1990, the U.S. prison population more than doubled; the incarceration rate increased during the same period from 139 to 293. While elected officials, judges, and government criminal justice experts argue that incarceration reduces crime, other critics dispute the government's scientific basis for supporting increased imprisonment.
Abstract
Crime in the United States is measured through the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system. To support its policies, the Department of Justice has compared UCR violent crime rates with imprisonment rates between 1960 and 1990 in 10-year increments. However, a careful examination of this evidence, according to these authors, suggests that increases in the use of incarceration have not had an appreciable effect on crime rates; overall, the UCR crime rate has increased 200 percent during this period, despite the growing prison population. An annual analysis of crime statistics shows periods of relative stabilization in each decade, followed by crime rate increases. A true analysis must take into consideration demographic trends, possible shifts from property crime to drug trafficking, and the effect of alternative forms of punishment. These authors present results from the California imprisonment experiment to support their claim that incarceration does not reduce crime. Crime can more effectively be reduced by addressing causal factors including infant mortality, adolescent pregnancy, high school dropout rates, unemployment, drug abuse, and the lack of meaningful job opportunities, particularly for minority males. 1 table, 8 figures, and 14 references