Out-of-Control Prison Growth

New Solutions Campaign

Promoting Fair & Effective Criminal Sentencing • Strengthening Families & Communities

Unparalleled Prison Growth

Over the last 20 years, the U.S. prison population has grown at a staggering rate. The engine driving this explosive growth has been the
incarceration of nonviolent law offenders and mandatory minimum sentencing. The U.S. now has the largest prison population, numerically
and per capita, in the world. More than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States. One in one hundred adults in the U.S. is
behind bars. The U.S. accounts for only five percent of the world’s population, but we account for 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.

New Jersey’s prison growth has not only kept pace with this national trend—it has exceeded it. In 1987, the state passed the Compre-
hensive Drug Reform Act, considered one of the harshest laws of its kind in the country. Several of the provisions of the Act authorized
mandatory minimum sentences. In the years since the Act, a constant stream of new and harsher penalties were enacted.

In 1986, when the Comprehensive Drug Reform Act was passed, the New Jersey Department of Corrections budget was $289 million dollars.
Twenty years later, the Corrections budget is a whopping $1.33 billion. This budget growth far outstrips all other parts of the state’s budget.
From 1979 until 2006, the corrections budget grew by a factor of 13 while the overall budget grew only by a factor of six.

The result of these legislative changes has been profound, both in human and financial terms. In 1987, only 11 percent of the New Jersey
prison population was incarcerated for drug offenses. Today, 32 percent of New Jersey inmates are incarcerated for drug offenses.
New Jersey has the highest proportion of nonviolent
drug offenders as a proportion of its overall prison
Number of Prison and Jail Inmates, 1910 - 2000
population in the nation (36 percent). While the The 1990s and the 1980s dwarf all other decades in prison growth
prison population rose from 7,990 in 1982 to
2,500,000
28,622 in 2001, the percentage of individuals
serving mandatory minimum sentences rose from 2,042,479
(2001)
11 percent to 61 percent. 2,000,000 1,965,667
(2000)
Prison used to be reserved for the most dangerous
and incorrigible individuals—today it has become 1,500,000
the default option for a vast number of offenses such
1,148,702
as nonviolent drug offenses that previously would (1990

have called for short prison sentences and/or 1,000,000

community supervision such as probation or parole.
The overuse of prison and draconian prison sentences 500,000
474,368
(1980)
332,945
for nonviolent drug offenses has resulted in the 272,955 338,029
112,362 110,099
warehousing of thousands of nonviolent prisoners 180,889 252,615

at enormous costs to taxpayers. 0

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 99/00/01*

The time has come to put an end to this radical social
experiment in mass incarceration and implement
policies that will allow for fair and effective sentences
and improve public safety.
Source: Justice Policy Institute ananlysis of U.S. Department of Justice Data.
*1999, 2000, and 2001 are Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates of what could
be the year end totals
U.S. out-of-control prison growth

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