Home      Login

Abstract: 

Advocates for the reduced use of incarceration have highlighted the fact that the United States is one of the top, if not the top, country imprisoning its citizens. Now, with over two million Americans behind bars, a right–left consensus has emerged, and is moving forward, on the idea that the use of imprisonment should be curtailed. Greene, Director of the Brooklyn-based Justice Strategies group, and Schiraldi, a Senior Justice Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, suggest three lessons that can be learned from New York City’s efforts to reduce its jail population.

Keywords: advocacy-driven decarceration efforts; pretrial release, dismissals, adjournments; front-end alternative to incarceration (probation); back-end release valve for overcrowding (parole); program evaluation; recidivism

Affiliations:  1: Editor, Offender Programs Report.