Which States Have Reduced Their Prison Populations in the Past Decade?

By 2002, in the wake of a recession that caused difficult fiscal challenges in many states, there was an increasingly widespread recognition that the American imprisonment boom of the 1980s and 1990s was not economically sustainable. Dozens of states adopted new sentencing and corrections policies that were intended to restrain further growth in imprisonment. These reforms seem to have had some success, as imprisonment rates finally stabilized after so many years of explosive growth. However, very little progress has been made toward bringing U.S. imprisonment rates back down to historic and international norms. The “if you build it, they will come” principle seems in evidence — after so much prison capacity was built in the boom years, we’ve found ways to keep using it even as crime rates have tumbled down.

Notwithstanding the overall national picture, a few states have had success in downsizing their prison populations. Here are the ten states whose prison populations dropped between December 2002 and December 2012:

New York             -19%
New Jersey          -17%
California             -16%
Connecticut         -15%
Michigan              -14%
Maryland             -9%
South Carolina    -5%
Wisconsin            -5%
Rhode Island       -2%
Hawaii                  -1%

Even the largest decreases on the list are rather small compared with the size of the pre-2002 increases. Nonetheless, some might wonder whether reduced imprisonment has resulted in more crime. With that concern in mind, I gathered data on violent crime in the five states that experienced double-digit drops in imprisonment.  

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Federal Courts App

The Federal Courts app provides access to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, and all the local rules, as well as PACER.  The app is now available for Android, iPhone, and iPad from KosInteractive, which also has state court apps (but not yet apparently for Wisconsin).

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An Analysis of the Israel Passport Case, Zivotofsky v. Kerry

Recently the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Zivotofsky v. Kerry to resolve an important question in U.S. foreign relations law: does the power to recognize foreign states and governments belong exclusively to the President, or do the political branches hold it concurrently? More specifically, the case concerns the constitutionality of Section 214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2003, which requires that upon request from a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem the Secretary of State must record “Israel” as the place of birth on the individual’s passport. After signing the bill into law, President Bush declined to honor its terms, and President Obama has done likewise. Both have argued that the passport requirement impermissibly interferes with the President’s recognition power because it contradicts a longstanding U.S. policy not to acknowledge the sovereignty of any state over Jerusalem. The Zivotofskys appear to agree that honoring the requirement would amount to U.S. recognition of an Israeli state that includes Jerusalem, but contend that the statute is constitutional and binding on the President because Congress shares in the recognition power. Oral argument is scheduled for the fall. If you’re interested, I wrote a brief analysis of the case over at the international law blog Opinio Juris. You can read it here.

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