Low Level Offenders & Decarceration

+ Brandon Fuller

In a recent segment for WBEZ’s Morning Shift, Mark Kleiman discussed why the release of “low-level offenders” alone would not do much to reduce the number of people behind bars in the United States. To reduce America’s incarceration rate, we have to find ways to deal with people behind bars for violent offences. Kleiman focuses on two approaches: improving the prison-to-community re-entry process and the setting the length of prison sentences more in line with the evidence on actual deterrence.

"The key fact here, from a policy point of view, is that over the course of a 40-year sentence somebody gets 40-years older. And serious crime has about the same age structure as serious basketball. There are people who are still major players after age 35, but not a lot of them."

- Mark Kleiman

Listen to the full discussion here

 

Tile photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk

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