America’s incarceration rate hasn’t been this low in nearly a quarter-century. In just the last decade, the population in prisons and jails across the country has shrunk by upwards of 150,000 inmates. All the while, the violent crime rate has plummeted.
It’s a significant shift that has gone virtually unnoticed in the midst of a bitterly fought election campaign, even as it appears to mark the end of the bipartisan tough-on-crime consensus.
