Decades of stable incarceration ended suddenly in the mid-1970s, as the U.S. prison population soared from about 300,000 to 1.6 million inmates, and the incarceration rate from 100 per 100,000 to over 500 per 100,000. (...) [T]he United States is now the world’s largest jailer, both in absolute numbers and in rate
Table 1B: various offenses’ contribution to state prison growth, 1980–1990, 1990–2009
1980 1990 2009 % 1980-1990 %1990-2009
Total 294,000 681,400 1,362,000
Violent 173,300 316,600 724,300 36% 60%
Property 89,300 173,700 261,200 22% 13%
Drug 19,000 148,600 242,200 33% 14%
Other 12,400 45,500 134,500 9% 13%
When the crime drop begins, however — which is when one might expect drug offenses to become more important, since they are more discretionary — the importance of drug offenses declines precipitously, and the incarceration of violent offenders dominates.
In other words, whatever the historical importance of drug offenses to prison growth, the incarceration of drug offenders is not a central causal factor today.
And in the conclusion, also verbatim:
(...) [i]f legislators decide that reducing drug enforcement is still a net social good, regardless of its impact on prison populations, the tools at their disposal are limited.
Criminal justice enforcement in the United States is highly disaggregated across a wide range of institutions operating relatively independently of each other. At least right now, prison growth is driven by prosecutorial aggressiveness, and legislatures have little control over locally elected, locally funded prosecutorial offices.
Legislative success may require unconventional yet viable approaches, such as adopting charging or pleading guidelines or making efforts to push the cost of felony incarceration onto county budgets