Decarceration in the United States


Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. A 2025 report from the Prison Policy Initiative states that there are nearly 2 million people incarcerated in the United States. The United States on average incarcerates more people per capita than any other independent democracy. The 2025 report shows that State Prisons currently have 1,098,000 people incarcerated; local jails have 562,000, Federal Prisons & Jails 204,000 and Immigration Detention Centers have 48,000 incarcerated.
As of 2019, the US was home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. possessed the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding prison reduction as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited. As a result of the push for criminal justice reform in the wake of the pandemic, as of 2022, the incarceration rate in the United States declined to 505 per 100,000, resulting in the United States no longer having the highest incarceration rate in the world, but still remaining in the top five.

Decarceration efforts

Decarceration includes overlapping reformist and abolitionist strategies, from "front door" options such as sentencing reform, decriminalization, diversion and mental health treatment to "back door" approaches, exemplified by parole reform and early release into re-entry programs, amnesty for inmates convicted of non-violent offenses and imposition of prison capacity limits. While reforms focus on incremental changes, abolitionist approaches include budget reallocations, prison closures and restorative and transformative justice programs that challenge incarceration as an effective deterrent and necessary means of incapacitation. Abolitionists support investments in familial and community mental health, affordable housing and quality education to gradually transition prison and jail employees to jobs in other economic sectors.
"Multiple American states punish sexual offenses with chemical castration and allow chemical or surgical castration instead of prison time. Surgical castration of sex offenders virtually eliminates recidivism by castrated offenders; chemical castration is also effective." The American Civil Liberties Union opposes chemical castration as a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Opposition

Opponents of decarceration include think tanks that assert mass decarceration would release violent criminals back onto the streets to re-offend; law enforcement organizations that argue drug decriminalization and legalization will escalate crime; prison guard unions that seek to preserve jobs and economic security; "tough on crime" lawmakers responding to public concerns about violent crime; and private prison contractors who contributed $1.6 million to candidates, parties and independent expenditures in the 2016 election cycle.

Decarceration in context of incarceration

Increased incarceration rates

According to 2018-2020 statistics, over 2.2million people in the U.S. are incarcerated in prison, jail and detention centers, with 1.3million inmates in state prison, 631,000 held in local jails under county and municipal jurisdiction, 226,000 in federal prisons and jails, 50,165 in immigrant detention centers and 48,000 in juvenile facilities. An additional 4.5 million people in the United States are under custodial supervision, either probation or parole. According to a survey distributed by The Pew Charitable Trusts in December 2015, "the number of accused and convicted criminal offenders in the United States who are supervised with ankle monitors and other GPS-system electronic tracking devices rose nearly 140 percent over 10 years," resulting in more than 125,000 people under electronic supervision in 2015, an increase from 53,000 in 2005.
The U.S. incarceration rate increased 700% between the 1970s and 2000s, when it went from 200,000 incarcerated in 1973 to its peak of 2.4 million in 2009. Initially fueled in the 70's and 80's by increases in violent crimes and property offenses, incarceration rates continued to escalate even after the crime wave subsided in the mid 1990s, with the U.S. government spending $270 billion to incarcerate prisoners in 2018.
Scholars say the reasons for the continued increase in incarceration rates include: "tough on crime" legislators articulating public fears triggered by several high-profile murders; the government's war on drugs in which communities of color saw increased arrests and prison sentences; and prison system stakeholders who benefitted economically from incarceration. Tough on crime campaigns led to the abolition of parole in some states, restrictions on the power of parole boards and harsher mandatory minimum sentencing laws, such as California's 1994 Three Strikes law, a ballot proposition that imposed a 25 years to life sentence for multiple felony convictions.

Federal and state prison populations

Decarceration proponents point to the U.S.'s high incarceration rates when pushing for reforms to reduce what they call a racially skewed prison population that sees African Americans incarcerated disproportionately at five times or more the rate of whites.
In the most recent comprehensive Department of Justice statistical analysis, the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2020 issued a report "Prisoners in 2018" that said between 2017 and 2018, the total prison population declined by 24,000 inmates, but still resulted in the incarceration of 1,465,200 inmates under federal and state jurisdiction. The combined state and federal imprisonment rate, excluding local jails, was 431 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents, constituting the lowest federal and state incarceration rate since 1996 when there were 427 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 residents. The report said the imprisonment rate fell 15% across the decade, dropping 28% among African Americans, 21% among Latinos, and 13% among whites.
In 2017, more than half of state prisoners sentenced to one year or longer were serving a sentence for a violent crime.
In 2018, Minnesota, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont had the lowest imprisonment rates in the U.S., with fewer than 200 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 residents." In contrast, a total of 22 states reported imprisonment rates that exceeded the national average.
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At the end of 2017, fewer than 15% of sentenced state prisoners were serving time for drug sale or use.
Among sentenced state prisoners at year-end 2017, the most recent year for which crime-related data was available, an estimated three-fifths of Blacks and Hispanics and nearly half of whites were behind bars for a violent offense.
At the same time, 23% of sentenced white prisoners in state prison were incarcerated for a property offense, compared to 13% of sentenced black and Hispanic prisoners. By the end of 2018, an estimated 3% of federal and state prisoners were 65 or older.
Male prisoners constituted 93% of the prison population; female prisoners 7%. Non-US citizens made up 7.7% of the prison population, comparable to 6.9% of the general population.

Inmates held pre-trial

In 2020, the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative issued a report, "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020", that said, based on the most recent census data and information from the Bureau of Prisons, an overwhelming majority of inmates in county and municipal jails were being held pre-trial, without having been convicted of a crime. The Pre-Trial Justice Institute noted, "Six out of 10 people in U.S. jails—nearly a half million individuals on any given day—are awaiting trial. People who have not been found guilty of the charges against them account for 95% of all jail population growth from 2000 to 2014."
In 2017, 482,100 inmates in federal and state prisons were held pre-trial.
Decarceration advocates contend the large pre-trial detention population serves as a compelling reason for bail reform anchored in a presumption of innocence. "We don't want people sitting in jails only because they cannot afford their financial bail," said Representative John Tilley of Kentucky, a state that has eliminated commercial bail and relies on a risk assessment to determine a defendant's flight risk.
In March 2020, the Department of Justice issued its report, noting the county and municipal jail population, totaling 738,400 inmates, had decreased by 12% over the last decade, from an estimated 258 jail inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents in 2008 to 226 per 100,000 in 2018. For the first time since 1990, the 2018 jail incarceration rate for African Americans fell below 600 per 100,000, while the juvenile jail population dropped 56%, from 7,700 to 3,400.
In 2018, sixty-eight percent of jail inmates were behind bars on felony charges, about two-thirds of the total jail population was awaiting court action or held for other reasons.
Racial disparity is an enormous factor in bail, and its effect on pretrial detention is profound. Studies show that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be detained pretrial because of their inability to post bail, which increases the likelihood of conviction and longer sentences. The article “The Downstream Effects of Bail and Pretrial Detention on Racial Disparities in Incarceration” by Donnelly EA and Macdonald JM, highlights significant disparities based on race in the criminal justice system. The disparities are rooted in wealth-based bail systems that affect racial minorities, particularly African Americans and Hispanics. The findings are that because of lower median household incomes, the economic disparity often results in prolonged pretrial detention, which exacerbates racial disparities in incarceration and conviction rates.