There is nothing inevitable about America’s over-use of prisons [economist.com]

So many of America’s troubles are intractable. Hyper-partisanship and the culture wars can make reducing gun violence or obesity seem hopeless. But mass incarceration is different. There is ample evidence that America’s states can lock fewer people up and still preserve public safety. Just look at Minnesota, which bangs up people at half the rate of neighbouring Wisconsin, though the crime rate in both places is about the same (see article). In a few weeks’ time voters in Wisconsin and in other states will be asked to choose whether they wish to keep putting so many people inside or try something else. They should vote for change.

America is violent, so it naturally makes more use of prison than many other countries do. But that cannot explain how it manages to be the world leader in locking up its own citizens, both in absolute terms and as a share of the population. China is a one-party state with a billion more citizens than America, yet it incarcerates half a million fewer people (though this does not include perhaps 1m Uighurs interned in camps in Xinjiang). You might think America’s legal system and culture are to blame. But the incarceration rate—defined as the number of prisoners divided by the total population—is four-and-a-half times greater than in Britain, which has a similar system and culture.

The best explanation for most of this prison binge is four decades of panic, starting with the declaration of a war on drugs in the 1970s. Voters elected prosecutors who promised to lock more people up than their rivals. They chose legislators who promised the harshest possible mandatory-sentencing laws, which took discretion away from judges. In some states prison-officers’ unions lobbied for new, bigger jails to be built, so as to provide their members with jobs. The use of pre-trial detention shot up. In places where public defenders are scarce, that resulted in long waits behind bars before a case was even heard.

[For more on this story, go to https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/20/there-is-nothing-inevitable-about-americas-over-use-of-prisons ]