People Sentenced to Federal Prison for Drug Offenses, 1980-2020 Approximately 4,000 people benefited from retroactivity of the law. 22 In 2019, the First Step Act applied the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act retroactively, and reduced other sentences for drug offenses. In 2010, the US Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act in an effort to ameliorate some of the damage done by the law, reducing the sentencing cocaine disparity from 100-1 to 18-1. Four years after its passage, that figure increased to 49%. Prior to the enactment of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the average federal drug sentence for Black individuals was 11% higher than for whites. 20 That increase was borne disproportionately by Black individuals. In 1986, people released after federal imprisonment for a drug conviction spent under two years in prison, but by 2005 people convicted of federal drug charges served an average of seven years. In contrast, the mandatory minimum trigger for powder cocaine, a chemically identical drug to crack, required the sale of 100 times that amount. 19 This climb was exacerbated by the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, which imposed stiff mandatory minimums for drug offenses, including a five-year mandatory minimum for the simple possession or sale of five grams of crack cocaine. 18 The guidelines went into effect in late 1987, at the same time that federal parole was eliminated, and federal prison sentences began their steep upward climb, especially for drug offenses. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 17 established the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) with the primary task of creating sentencing guidelines for the purpose of limiting the discretion of sentencing judges at the federal level. This is particularly evident at the federal level. Sentencing policies enacted under the banner of the “War on Drugs” which began in the early 1970s and accelerated with the utilization of broadly punitive mandatory minimum and three-strikes policies, resulted in dramatic growth in incarceration for drug offenses. Prisoners in 2021–Statistical tables.Bureau of Justice Statistics. Ranked Imprisonment Rates in State & Federal Prison, 2021 Historical corrections statistics in the United States, 1850-1984. State and Federal Prison Population, 1925-2021 14 Compared with 2020, in 2021, the United States dramatically slowed its prison decarceration and increased its jail population. 13 It is important to note that the remarkable 14% decline in 2020 alone was principally caused by accelerated releases during the first year of the global pandemic and thus misrepresents the overall 25% drop in imprisonment since 2010 with the exception of 2020, prison numbers have declined in the range of 0.5 to 3% annually. The number of people in prison began a marginal decline beginning in 2010 and thus far has not reversed course. The federal system grew 53% larger during this five-year period alone. And between 19, all states, with the exception of Maine, substantially increased their prison populations, from 13% in South Carolina to as high as 130% in Texas. Between 19 alone, the total prison population grew an average of eight percent annually. 11 The prison expansion that commenced in 1973 reached its peak in 2009, achieving a seven-fold increase over the intervening years. In 1972, the imprisonment rate was 93 per 100,000 people. 9 Trust in law enforcement deteriorates as community members experience elevated levels of victimization and the loss of community members, friends, and family members to incarceration. 8 High levels of incarceration also destabilizes entire communities, leading to dissolution of informal networks that are known to serve as barriers to neighborhood crime. 7 Children of incarcerated parents suffer tremendously imprisonment of a parent leads to significant declines in academic and health outcomes for children. 6 Food insecurity, housing instability, and reliance on public assistance are also associated with prior imprisonment. 5 Imprisonment leads to declining prospects for employment and results in lower earnings in the longer term. Mass incarceration instigates numerous poor physical, psychological, and economic outcomes for the people who experience imprisonment, for their families, as well as for the broader community. Misguided changes in sentencing law and policy –not crime– account for the majority of the increase in correctional supervision. The social, moral, and fiscal costs associated with the large-scale, decades-long investment in mass imprisonment cannot be justified by any evidence of its effectiveness.
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