In recent years, the political landscape of criminal justice in the United States has shifted away from the “get tough on crime” era of the 80s and 90s,and politicians from all backgrounds seem to be embracing more lenient criminal justice reforms. However, a recent study by Katherine Beckett, Anna Reosti, and Emily Knaphus challenges the assumption that there is a general consensus. Instead, they argue that the state of criminal justice politics and policies is more aptly defined by complexity and contradictions, which may hinder meaningful reductions in prison populations.

Beckett and her colleagues analyzed state correctional policies collected by the National Council of State Legislatures to assess the punitive or nonpunitive nature of legal provisions enacted from 2000 to 2013. The findings suggest that prior to the recession, many states enacted punitive anti-crime policies, but following 2007, more lenient provisions outnumbered punitive ones by nearly 3 to 1. However, these nonpunitive reforms were mainly limited to drug and parole policies, and a punitive trend towards violent or sex offenses remained and even intensified in some states.

The researchers also reviewed newspaper articles and editorials about criminal justice reform from 2008 to 2014 to understand the surrounding political discussions.  Their results suggest that most news coverage regarding criminal justice reform focused on fiscal concerns as the main justification for reducing correctional populations, while the human costs of mass incarceration were rarely mentioned. Moreover, the intended beneficiaries of these reforms were those individuals who were convicted of a nonviolent or drug offenses. There were only two mentions of policies aimed to benefit those convicted of violent offenses within the 163 articles that were analyzed.

While we are witnessing meaningful progress in reducing prison populations, the current reforms are only geared towards nonviolent offenses. Further, political discourse is typically focused on the money lost to mass incarceration, as opposed to its negative effects on the lives of millions of Americans. Reversing mass incarceration will require incorporating broader reforms that address the social costs of imprisonment and emphasize the humanity of all the individuals under correctional supervision.