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"How can we safely and systematically reduce the correctional population by half in eight years?"


In September of 2008, the Keystone Group met to cast the vision for the initial work initiatives of the Norval Morris Project. They set a goal of working to reduce the U.S. incarceration rate by 50 percent, using as its initial inspiration James Austin’s 2007 report entitled "Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America's Prison Population" ix

This Keystone Group team commissioned author James Austin to produce "Reducing America's Correctional Population: A Strategic Plan". In it, Austin notes that "all correctional populations are the result of two key factors-admissions and length of stay (or LOS)." These two factors have driven the growth of correctional populations in the past and will be the keys to population reductions in the future.ix To those could be added prevention, including first admissions to any part of the criminal justice system and readmissions as a result of new sentences or revocations.

After inviting Project supporters around the country to participate in the Population Reduction Topic Team, this team is now examining the main drivers of increasing populations, including the factors influencing admissions and readmission, length of supervision, and the role corrections may play in prevention. The next step is to engage others to help develop strategies and share results with the widest possible audience by:
  • Drafting comprehensive position papers on effective ways to safely and systematically reduce the correctional populations.
  • Identifying relevant research and bodies of knowledge from many different fields to inform the process.
  • Developing strategies for sharing this knowledge with wider audiences to build support for the work.
  • Engaging policy makers and others across the country.
An effort of this magnitude touches on every aspect of correctional policy and practice. It means a qualitative change in the mission of corrections, a fundamental reorientation of its operations and practices, and a transformation of its workforce similar to what has occurred internationally.xi It requires redefining corrections' relationship to families and communities, other governmental and nongovernmental human service organizations or systems, and the private sector. Such an undertaking demands the full support of legislative and judicial bodies as well as executive leadership in every state, including those at the local level. The purpose of the Norval Morris project is to develop the framework to find pathways corrections can follow to lead the country to a future very different from the one implied by current projections.

Topic Background

In 1980, there were 1.84 million persons in the U.S. under some form of correctional supervision, either incarcerated in a prison or jail or being supervised in the community by probation or parole agencies. Today, nearly 30 years later, over 7.5 million people are incarcerated or being supervised in the community. This includes over 1.5 million prisoners and another 780,000 jail inmates. Based on a U.S. population of 303 million, this means the U.S. incarceration rate is 762 inmates per 100,000 in the population. By comparison, the most recent available estimates indicate there are more than 9.8 million people incarcerated worldwide. Based on a world population of 6.7 billion people, the world incarceration rate is 145 inmates per 100,000 in the population. No other country, including many that have higher victimization rates, has a higher incarceration rate than the United States.i

In 2007, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a report estimating that the U.S. prison population would reach 1.7 million by 2011 and that the prison incarceration rate for the same year would be 550 inmates per 100,000 population.ii Incarceration rates have continued to rise even though sentence lengths have become shorter, because offenders spend more time under correctional supervision due to decisions made after adjudication.iii This Norval Morris Project Population Reduction Topic Team, in keeping with the spirit of Norval Morris' work, will focus on pragmatic approaches to problem solving and strategies available to corrections practitioners to reduce the total correctional population by half iv.

Estimates of the national cost of corrections routinely exceed $50 billion a year. In January 2009, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that two-thirds of the states, as well as the District of Columbia, are facing serious budget shortfalls, even after making major cuts last year. That number will no doubt grow in the coming months as additional states have indicated that they will also face budget crises this year.v As leaders at all levels and in each branch of government deal with the effects of the finical crisis, they are also reexamining policies that have driven the extraordinary growth of the corrections population.vi While we may have differing perspectives on the philosophy of justice that should motivate the corrections system, all recognize that the system should calibrate punishments to fit both the crime and the offender while remaining effective and humane. A key question is how much punishment is required to serve justice and how much, beyond that level, is now being imposed that is both too costly and very often counterproductive.

Ironically, against the backdrop of the continuing growth of correctional populations is the fact that crime rates in the U.S. have been dropping for over a decade. In its last release of Uniform Crime Reports data, the FBI reported that the violent crime rate in the U.S. had fallen to the lowest rate since the early 1970s, while property crime rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the late 1960s. The incapacitation effects of high levels of incarceration were partly responsible for this historic drop in crime, but the question remains whether it is still the appropriate strategy in an era of declining crime rates.vii Added to this is the fact that the current level of incarceration carries with it both enormous social costs and substantial opportunity costs as resources that states and local jurisdictions could use for other purposes are diverted to corrections.viii

Reducing correctional populations overall will require a change at each decision point in the criminal justice system away from the practices of the recent past. In recent years, there has been a trend toward a greater likelihood that a conviction will result in a sanction involving correctional supervision (in the community or by incarceration) and for a longer period of time. The challenge in reversing these trends will be to reduce the likelihood that decision makers throughout the criminal justice system will "step up" to greater levels of supervision and for longer periods when they have the option. Instead, at each decision point in the system, greater weight would be given to decisions that produce a "step down" to less supervision for shorter periods. Relatively small changes at key decision points in the system, applied systematically over time, will reduce the total correctional population by 50 percent within the proposed timeframe and without jeopardizing public safety.

The key to the success of such strategies is that they must be data driven. Correctional agencies can analyze their past practices to estimate what their long range impacts have been on population growth. Existing, legally relevant defendant/offender and case characteristics can form the basis of such data. Armed with such precise information, an agency could estimate how the long-term affect of new decision making practices compare to their past choices. For example, a diversion program could be kept from "widening the net" if those offenders who otherwise would have been brought into the criminal justice system or been "stepped up" to incarceration could be precisely identified. Combining this analysis with validated risk assessment tools and existing population projection techniques would amplify the power of this type of evidence-based decision making.

Ultimately, the solution to reducing correctional populations is to reduce the number of offenders by preventing crime. This addresses the second question the Keystone group posed: "How can we transform correctional leadership and the workforce to empower staff to prevent recidivism and promote prevention?" It is an essential companion to the population reduction topic. Reducing the correctional population is not an end in itself if it does not involve reorienting corrections toward a different role. For example, the siblings and children of incarcerated people are known to have a very high risk of becoming offenders. Corrections is well positioned to use strength-based approaches that give equal weight to the skills and resources offenders and their families have or can develop in working with them to reduce recidivism by the offender and prevent involvement in the criminal justice system by others. For instance, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and Family Justice have partnered to create a strength-based approach for family-focused community supervision that provides a model for other agencies.x
iWalmsley, R., "World Prison Population List, Eight Edition", International Centre for Prison Studies, King's College London; Van Dijk, J., van Kesteren, J., and Smit, P., Criminal Victimisation in International Perspective, Key findings from the 2004-2005 ICVS and EU ICS, United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice
Research Institute, 2008.
ii Public Safety Performance Project. (February 2007) Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America's Prison Population, The Pew Charitable Trusts.
iiiBureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Statistics Online, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/njs/prisons.htm.
iv Morris, N. and Hawkins, G., The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1969.
v Johnson, N. January (2009) Budget Cuts or Tax Increases at the State Level: Which is Preferable During a Recession? Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
vi Crary, D. (January 10, 2009) Budget woes prompt states to rethink prison policy. Associated Press.
vii See "The Impact of Incarceration on Crime: Two National Experts Weigh In", Pew Public Saftey Performance Project, April, 2008; Spelman, W. "The limited importance of prison expansion", in Blumstein, A. and Wallman J. (Eds). The Crime Drop in America, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006
viii Clear, T., Imprisoning Communities, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007.
ix Austin, J., et al. (2007) Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America's Prison Population. The JFA Institute.
x Jones, J. and Shapiro, C. (Winter 2007). The Oklahoma Family Justice Project: Improving Community Supervision Outcomes One Family at a Time. Perspectives - American Probation and Parole Association.
xi McNeill, F., et al., 21st Century Social Work: Reducing Re-Offending: Key Practice Skills, G.S.o.S. Work, Editor. 2005, Scottish Executive: Edinburgh.


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