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America’s incarceration rate is in decline
Long sentences and recidivism kept prison populations high for decades, but prisons are now starting to empty.
But whether it was due to this mass release, COVID, de-policing, other factors, or some combination thereof, crime exploded in 2020 after a long quiescent period, most shockingly with an unprecedented 30 percent increase in homicides. The simplest available policy to accelerate the decarceration trend is to stop building prisons except in cases where a smaller, modern facility is replacing a larger, decaying institution. In any given future year, small rises in imprisonment are possible, but the macro trend is ineluctable: Society is going to experience the benefits of past decades of lower crime throughout its prison system.
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