New York City defied national trends, cut incarceration rate in half, study finds

PBS NewsHour
By: Ryan Connelly Holmes
Published: November 4, 2016
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In this story by PBS NewsHour's The Rundown, Ryan Connelly Holmes quotes Better By Half  co-authors Judith Greene and Vincent Schiraldi, as they question the efficacy of mass incarceration as a crime control strategy, and point to how community activism for diversion and sentencing alternatives, changes in police enforcement and District Attorney charging practices, as well as the 2009 Rockefeller Drug Law reforms, have led to a reduction of better than 50 percent in NYC's jail and prison populations, over two decades.  The study points the way for other jurisdictions to follow, the authors state.

Related Publication

JS Publication October 28, 2016

Better by Half: The New York City Story of Winning Large-Scale Decarceration while Increasing Public Safety

Released in the midst of a growing national discussion about ending mass incarceration, a new publication highlights New York’s reversal on incarceration and offers lessons on how other cities and states can substantially reduce incarceration while promoting safety. 

In Better by Half, co-authors Judith Greene, Director of Justice Strategies, and Vincent Schiraldi, Senior Research Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Program in Criminal Justice, describe how New York City, which once struggled with overflowing jail populations and high rates of violent crime, cut its combined jail and prison incarceration rate by 55 percent and reduced serious crime by 58 percent between 1996 and 2014. 

By contrast, the national incarceration rate grew by 12 percent during the same time period, and was accompanied by a more modest decrease in serious crime of 42 percent. By 2014, New York City earned the distinction of having the lowest crime rate of the nation’s 20 largest cities, and the second lowest jail incarceration rate. And New York State had become one of three states (along with New Jersey and California) leading the nation in terms of prison population reductions. Read more »