From Inquest:
Mass incarceration is so deeply entrenched, it takes tremendous energy just to get the decarceral ball rolling. But deciding how to channel this momentum once it builds can also be a real challenge. How, exactly, should we shrink, unwind, or close prisons?
No one expects this work to happen all at once. Still, it can be helpful to identify and assess decarceral pathways at the outset. The options are numerous, and even those that would achieve the same numeric target—whether it’s reducing the prison population by 10, 50, or 100%—can have vastly different social consequences. Some approaches, for example, might be structured to divert as many people as possible from ending up in prison in the first place. Others might try to minimize the risk that decarceration could increase crime on the outside. Still others might seek to reduce the prison population as quickly as possible. And still more might focus on limiting racial disparities among those still incarcerated.
No one path to decarceration can achieve all these goals at once. That’s in part because decarceration—by which I mean the by-the-numbers work of reducing the prison population—would likely occur against a backdrop of familiar constraints, including the composition of today’s prison population and the political reality of our current social order. Even when decarceral reforms are in reach, in other words, we may need to consider the tradeoffs of competing decarceral pathways and make choices that reflect deep value judgments about our priorities. Continue reading >>>
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