Discuss the factors influencing the growth of the American prison population.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary. For most of the 1980s, crime rates in the United States were much higher than they are today. In addition, during that decade, the likelihood of incarceration in a state prison after arrest increased fivefold for drug offenses, threefold for weapons offenses, and twofold for crimes such as sexual assault, burglary, auto theft, and larceny. With more convicted offenders facing greater probability of imprisonment, the state inmate population was bound to grow. In the federal criminal justice system, this trend has persisted.A number of "get tough" sentencing laws were passed in reaction to the crime wave of the 1970s and 1980s. These measures, including sentencing guidelines, mandatory minimum sentences, and truth-in-sentencing laws, have significantly increased the length of prison terms in the United States.An increase in federal drug offenders is largely responsible for the growth of the federal prison population. Because of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, federal drug traffickers spend an average of seventy-four months behind bars, considerably longer than those sentenced to state prisons.Other factors driving federal prison population growth include the following:1. Starting in 1987, Congress abolished parole in the federal corrections system, meaning that federal inmates must serve their entire sentences, minus good time credits.2. The number of federal inmates sentenced for immigration violations (covered by federal law rather than state law) increased by more than 850 percent from 1990 to 2015.3. In 2017, nearly 12,700 female offenders were behind bars in federal prison, about 75 percent more than in 1995. Indeed, there were about the same number of women in federal prison for drug offenses in 2012 as there were for all offenses in 1995.