Why Do Prisons Increase Incarceration Rates?

The literature answers the issues of incarceration rates increasing by giving us the product such as legislative decisions that were the primary reason that led to the increase of charging and imprisoning more offenders as well as increasing sentences, limiting prison release, and expanding the prison capacity. Higher incarceration rates were not the sole reason for the increase in crime. Prisons were continuing to be built even though crime had been declining. Later resulting in the sharpest decrease in crime in American history. Essentially every states incarceration rate was increased by 150 percent from 1970 to 2000, and the median state increasewas 390 percent, which was taken from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2012. Having analyzed

Overtime lawmakers grasped onto the aggressive combative responses to crime, which led to mandatory sentence legislation, sentencing enhancements, severe anti drug laws, and bills that would finance prison expansion sustaining prison growth and higher incarceration. The majority of the data that was gathered was over a time span of forty yearsThe research design that was used in this study was method of data

Findings have identified the important changes and continuum in understanding imprisonment in the United States. Race was and still has remained a critical predictor of higher incarceration. Findings have also implied that the relationship between violent crime and incarceration became more important as violent crime had increased in 1980 and 1990 however it declined around1970, and no longer was powerful as crime declined by 2000. Attitudes on African Americans and crime regardless of crime decreasing still remained relatively the same. Even though the drop of offending amongst blacks the size of the black population continued to produce as a proxy for real offending. From historical case studies the disproportionate number of African Americans incarcerated in the U.S certify race’s central role in understanding punishment in America. Regarding the use of Sunbelt states it was suggested that Sunbelt states have in common penal and political history that have made them more likely to have harsher penal regime as well as political bias that have marginalized and oppressed minority