America's Prison Population Problem

This brief is written to provide you an overview of and data relating to America’s incarceration problems as we reach the end of Trump’s first two months in office.

America’s incarceration rate is other-worldly, but it hasn’t always been this way.

And the politics of which party is worse on this issue might surprise you.

Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs” started the United States on a path to becoming the top global industrial prison complex, with arrests, convictions and incarceration rates for Black Americans far outpacing their non-Black peers.

The next three Presidential administrations only worsened the problem.

George Bush Sr.’s 1990 Anti-Drug Abuse Act expanded incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders.

But the number of incarcerated individuals doubled during President Clinton’s time in office.

Clinton’s “criminal reform” bills, including the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 — resulted in the largest increase in incarcerated Americans in history.

Clinton’s “three strikes” law mandated life sentences for individuals convicted of three or more offenses — even nonviolent drug possession charges.

Clinton also expanded the federal death penalty, bloated the budgets of police departments nationwide, and began the process of prison privatization.