Is mass incarceration a myth?

The piece is authored by Barry Latzer, a professor of criminal justice at City University of New York and the author of a book on violent crime. Latzer acknowledges that mass incarceration has become a bogeyman in public discourse, with politicians and advocates across the political spectrum calling for it to end. His claim is provocative because everyone from Bernie Sanders to the Koch brothers now acknowledge that too many people are locked up in America. As criminal justice reform advocates like to say, the United States houses more than 25 percent of the world’s inmates but has only 5 percent of the world’s population.

Latzer hurts himself by dismissing the number of Americans incarcerated. He cites Bureau of Justice Statistics that less than 1 percent of the U.S. population is incarcerated, and that only 1.2 percent of black Americans are in prison. He asserts therefore that the word “mass” in “mass incarceration” is “a bit of hyperbole.”

But that “less than 1 percent” prison rate is still the highest in the world. On top of that:

• Nearly 1 in 3 American adults have some form of criminal or arrest record.

• The federal criminal code has risen from 3,000 to 5,000 crimes in recent decades.

• America’s prison population stands at about 2.3 million.

• Prison spending has increased roughly 600 percent over the last three decades.

• It costs $80 billion a year to run America’s criminal justice system.

• A young black man has a 1 in 3 chance of being imprisoned at some point in his life.

Latzer then moves on to his stronger point, which is that “U.S. imprisonment has been driven largely by violent crime.” Just over 50 percent of inmates are in prison for violent crimes. Nonviolent drug offenders get a lot of attention from reform advocates. But as The New York Times has reported, decreasing drug admissions to half their current levels would cause the prison population to decline by only 7 percent.

Latzer makes some other interesting points about racial disparities in sentencing and other issues that deserve to be read.

Mass incarceration is not a myth, unless you believe America should be incarcerating a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. The myth is that America’s prison rates can drop only by releasing nonviolent offenders or reducing their sentences.

At some point, like it or not, in order to address mass incarceration, the country will have to address whether the criminal justice system is too punitive toward violent offenders, or whether some violent offenders deserve leniency.

I’ve called this the third rail of criminal justice reform. But unless and until it’s addressed, the myths will continue.

Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner