The idea that America has far too many people behind bars has become bipartisan, conventional wisdom. But actually releasing prisoners early remains a scary prospect due to fears that crime rates will rise once they’re back in their local communities.
A new study that examines the effects of a large-scale prisoner release in California suggests such fears are largely unfounded.
It finds a court-mandated 2011 law that reduced the state’s prison population by 17 percent “had no effect on aggregate rates of violent or property crime.”
“Significant reductions in the size of prison populations are possible without endangering public safety,” concludes a research team led by Jody Sundt of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
[For more of this story, written by Tom Jacobs, go to https://psmag.com/releasing-pr...b8b25c4eb#.fvm6sncb7]
Comments (0)