The U.S. prison population fell two consecutive years; 2010 the largest decrease since 1977 [View all]

[ProSense]

Criminal Justice Reform 2011 – The Good, the Bad, and the Work Ahead

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• A new report out from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) this month revealed that the number of adults behind bars, on probation, or on parole in the U.S. declined 1.3% in 2010, the second consecutive year of decline since BJS began reporting this data since 1980.
  
  
• The same report revealed that the total U.S. prison population fell to 1.6 million, a decline of 0.6 percent during 2010 – the first decline in the total prison population in nearly four decades.10,881 fewer people were in state prisons in 2010 – the largest yearly decrease since 1977.
  
  
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• The United States Sentencing Commission took another step toward creating fairness in federal sentencing by voting to retroactively apply the new Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) guidelines to individuals sentenced before the law was enacted. This decision will help ensure that over 12,000 people — 85 percent of whom are African-Americans — will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced.

The bad news:

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http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/criminal-justice-reform-2011-good-bad-and-work-ahead

When you look at the spike in the prison population from 1980 through the Bush years, this is welcomed news. As the ACLU points out, there is much more that can be done.