incarceration unsustainable?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Mar 8 13:43:28 PST 1999


Fellows, Jeffrey wrote:


>Mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws have no immediate effects on
>incarceration rates, since the affected individuals are going to prison
>anyway.

Mandatory minimums insist that someone go to prison who might not have without them, so that directly influences what the statisticians blandly call "admissions." And mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws slow down the rate of release, which also swells the prison pop.

I figured, though, that they NYT wouldn't have given such prominence to a critique of mass incarceration if there wasn't an official rethink going on somewhere. Thanks for confirming my suspicions!

Doug



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