Running Out of Inmates? Cohort Non-Replacement and the Approaching End of Mass Incarceration

• In Event: Policy-Implications of DLC Research 2: The Life-Course Consequences of Criminal Justice Policy

Abstract

The United States prison population is in the midst of a quiet, largely unrecognized, collapse.
Using the Age-Period-Cohort (APC) framework, we demonstrate that current declines in crime
and incarceration are driven primarily by cohort non-replacement: each successive generation
has entered adulthood with substantially lower propensities for criminal involvement than the
high-crime cohorts of the 1980s and 1990s. Although tough sentencing policy for many years
delayed the decline of imprisonment after crime started falling, the aging out of high-crime birth cohorts and the aging in of low-crime ones now guarantees acceleration rates of decarceration. We forecast based on National Corrections Reporting Project data that US prison admissions will fall by an additional 50% within two decades, approaching imprisonment levels last seen in the 1970s. We also address what we call the “orphan fact” of American criminal justice: the dramatic, largely unacknowledged decline in Black imprisonment. This progress should be recognized and built upon. The window to dismantle punitive sentencing infrastructure may have re-opened after the passing of the crime spike during COVID, and could be taken advantage of to hasten the end of mass incarceration.

Author

• Shawn D. Bushway, University at Albany, SUNY