Imprisonment Rates and the New Politics of Criminal Punishment

Abstract

While the rate of imprisonment in the United States has been increasing sharply for more than a quarter of a century, the seven years after 1993 present a special set of conditions because crime rates were decreasing while imprisonment rates continued to soar. The increase in imprisonment rate after 1991 is equal to the total imprisonment rate in the United States in 1981. This article links the recent increase in rate to a new politics of penal severity that assumes any increase in pain for criminal offenders produces a corresponding benefit to crime victims. Much of the mandatory punishment legislation of the period is a product of distrust of government that increases the level of government intervention. This new political landscape will be a very important restraint on the capacity to lower rates of incarceration in the foreseeable American future.