The number of prisoners under federal jurisdiction decreased for the first time since 1980, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Attorney General Eric Holder praised the new statistics Tuesday and announced that an even larger decline, as many as 10,000 prisoners, is projected to come over the next two years. Holder’s speech, a keynote address to the New York University School of Law, took place just two days before he announced his resignation, highlighting one of the largest achievements during his tenure as the nation’s top prosecutor.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were roughly 1,900 fewer federal prisoners at year end in 2013 than there were at the same point in 2012. However, this drop was offset by an increase in the number of inmates in state prisons, which had roughly 6,300 more prisoners in 2013 than the previous year. A total of 28 states saw population increases in state prisons, which led to the first net increase in the total U.S. inmate population (federal and state) since its peak in 2009.

The chart below shows the trends for both state and federal prisons over the last 35 years.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2013 Report

The U.S. prison population went from roughly 307,000 in 1978 to more than 1.5 million in 2013, an increase greater than 400 percent. Many attribute this dramatic growth to the “tough on crime” policies that dominated criminal justice legislation from the mid-1980s to the early-2000s.

Smart on Crime

The recent statistics come just over a year after Attorney General Eric Holder announced his Smart on Crime Initiative, which aims to increase sentencing fairness and offer alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent criminals. The initiative gained significant momentum earlier this year when the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to reduce mandatory sentencing guidelines for drug crimes in April. Shortly after that, the commission made the new guidelines retroactive, allowing as many as 50,000 prisoners to have their sentences reduced starting in 2015.

“This is nothing less than historic,” Holder said of the federal prisoner decrease on Tuesday in a keynote address at the Brennan Center for Justice. In his speech, he emphasized the new Smart on Crime policies and argued that they are starting to have some measurable effects.

In addition to last year’s decline, Holder said that the number of federal inmates is projected to drop by roughly 2,000 in the next year and by nearly 10,000 by the end of 2016, according to internal numbers from the Bureau of Prisons.

The consequences of this decline are significant for several reasons. Recent studies have argued that decreasing the prison population will not cause significant increases in crime rates.

“High incarceration rates and longer-than-necessary prison terms have not played a significant role in materially improving public safety, reducing crime, or strengthening communities.”

-Attorney General Eric Holder

Reducing the prison population is seen as a civil rights issue, as sentencing for drug crimes is widely seen as unfair to minorities. Reform advocates like the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) often cite the disproportionate amount of minorities who are arrested for drug crimes. According to the DPA:

Although rates of drug use and selling are comparable across racial lines, people of color are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than are whites.

Arrest disparities combined with troubling recidivism statistics may indicate that long prison sentences are not always the best solution for nonviolent criminals. However, not everyone is in favor of decreasing the number of inmates, as some continue to argue that high incarceration rates were an important factor to America’s falling crime rates.

The high incarceration rate has also created a significant economic burden for the federal and state governments. According to a report from the Congressional Research Service, the cost per inmate in federal prisons was $29,291 in 2013, an increase of over 35 percent since 2000. In 2010 alone, the United States spent nearly $80 billion on incarceration in federal and state prisons.

The economic and civil rights issues connected to growth in the prison population have created bipartisan support for reform. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) cosponsored the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2014, which aims to reduce the influence of mandatory minimums in the sentencing process. The bill, which a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office said could save more than $4 billion, would give judges more discretion in the sentencing process, allowing them to decide penalties on a case-by-case basis.

While the future of sentencing reform and the size of the prison population are not yet certain, supporters like Attorney General Holder proudly claim that change is coming:

Clearly, criminal justice reform is an idea whose time has come. And thanks to a robust and growing national consensus… we are bringing about a paradigm shift, and witnessing a historic sea change, in the way our nation approaches these issues.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The amount of prison time doled out by courts to perpetrators of non-violent, drug crimes are often excessively severe, sometimes more than 100 years in prison. In one particular case, a man was sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for possessing a bag with traces of cocaine. In another case, a man with no prior record is now serving a 25-year prison term for selling his pain pills to an undercover informant. These two individuals are just a few of the many serving years in prison due to harsh mandatory sentencing laws.

Keeping non violent criminals incarcerated for decades leads to overcrowded conditions and billions of taxpayer dollars. The mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have led to prisons vastly exceeding their maximum capacity. The United States has seen a 500 percent increase in the number of inmates in federal custody over the last 30 years.

The goal of these harsh laws is to deter would-be criminals from committing crimes when they realize that they could spend for the rest of their lives behind bars. This plan sounds good in theory, but has failed in practice. Hosting them is not cheap; it costs around $50,000 to keep one person in prison for one year in California alone. Although America has only five percent of the world’s population, it hosts 25 percent of the world’s prison inmates.

The issue of overcrowded prisons is alarmingly prominent in the United States, as other countries have adopted more effective means of dealing with individuals who commit minor offenses. For example, in 2001, Portugal became the first European country to abolish all criminal penalties for personal drug possession, and since then many countries around the world have followed suit. Drug users in Portugal are also provided with therapy rather than prison sentences. Research commissioned by the Cato Institute found that in the five years after the start of decriminalization, illegal drug use by teenagers declined, the rate of HIV infections transmitted via drug use dropped, deaths related to hard drugs were cut by more than half, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction doubled.

Finally, the United States has realized the gravity of the situation and decided to take action. Recently, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin and Senator Mike Lee introduced the Smarter Sentencing Act to reduce the number of harsh drug sentencing policies in the United States. Essentially, the goal of the Smarter Sentencing Act is to reserve the use of federal resources for the offenders of the most serious crimes. Lawmakers supporting this bill hope that it will cause judges to use less harsh punishments such as community service or drug therapy. Making these changes could save taxpayers billions in the first years of enactment alone.

Specifically, the Smarter Sentencing Act would amend the federal criminal code so that defendants without prior record who did not commit a violent crime receive a less severe sentence. The bill also aims to reduce the chance that prisons reach their maximum capacities and lower prison housing costs.

How would the Smarter Sentencing Act impact current laws?

Under current guidelines, a first-time drug offense involving at least 10 but not more than 20 grams of methamphetamine has a recommended sentence range of 27-33 months. Under the new guidelines, the same quantity of methamphetamine would have a sentence range for a first-time offense of 21-27 months.

Attorney General Eric Holder is urging lawmakers to fast track a solution to this problem, stating that “this over-reliance on incarceration is not just financially unsustainable. It comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate.”

Because Democrats and Republicans agree that the extreme sentencing problem is a serious one, prospects are good that this bill has a chance for success. Both parties more or less concede that there is a problem when looking at the prison system in the United States. Former Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan is one of the prominent conservatives expressing his support for reform of current mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

I think we had a trend in America for a long time on mandatory minimums where we took away discretion from judges. I think there’s an appreciation that that approach has some collateral damage—that that approach is missing in many ways…I think there is a new appreciation that we need to give judges more discretion in these areas.

-Paul Ryan

The push to pass the Smarter Sentencing Act is gaining momentum, as almost a year has passed since its introduction in the House in October 2013. Hopefully, with continued support for this legislation, it will soon become law and alleviate the growing problems associated with extreme mandatory minimum drug sentences.

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Marisa Mostek (@MarisaJ44) loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Barnellbe via Wikimedia]

Marisa Mostek

Marisa Mostek loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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