Cutting the incarceration rate in half

ACLU -The truth is that the U.S. could cut incarceration by half and still have more people locked up than any other country in the world.  And it could do so safely — over the last 10 years, 27 states have reduced both incarceration and crime rates.

The ACLU just shared a “Presidential Roadmap for Ending Mass Incarceration” with all the presidential candidates. The Roadmap contains dozens of different policy reforms that would each slash the number of people locked up at every point in the process, and combined would reduce the overall incarcerated population by far more than 50 percent. 

The Roadmap includes reforms addressing the front end of the criminal legal system, like policing and prosecutors, all the way to changes to parole and re-entry at the very back end, and everything in-between. The Roadmap also allows every presidential candidate to put together their own plan that would reach the 50 percent goal.

Reforms in just these four areas would reduce incarceration by half:

• Ending the War on Drugs by decriminalizing all drug possession 
• Bail reform that reduces the number of people we lock up before trial, often simply because they are too poor to afford cash bail; 
• Shortening extraordinarily excessive sentencing practices and abolishing rigid “mandatory minimums” and “three strikes” laws; 
• Granting clemency to people trapped in prison who are elderly, sick, or have already served more than enough time for their offense;