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Increased incarceration had a limited effect on reducing crime for the last two
decades: Increased incarceration had some effect, likely somewhere around 0-10 percent,
on reducing crime from 1990 to 2000. Since 2000, however, increased incarceration had an
almost zero effect on crime. Further, a number of states California, Michigan, New Jersey,
New York, and Texas have successfully reduced imprisonment while crime continued to
fall.
* Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Counsel and Julia Bowling is Research Associate at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. They
are co-authors of What Caused the Crime Decline?
Other factors reduced crime: Increased numbers of police officers, some data-driven
policing techniques, changes in income, decreased alcohol consumption, and an aging
population played a role in reducing crime. In particular, this report finds that the policing
technique known as CompStat is associated with a 5 to 15 percent decrease in crime. A
review of past research indicates that consumer confidence and inflation also likely
contributed to crime reduction.
As shown in Figure 2, as incarceration rose from 1980 (when Texas had 40,437 prisoners), the
effectiveness of increased incarceration adding new prisoners steadily declined. By 1995,
imprisonment increased five-fold to 127,766 prisoners, and effectiveness on crime declined to
essentially zero. The marginal effect on crime of adding more people to prisons remains at
essentially zero today.
This reports findings support further reforms to reduce Texass incarcerated population and show
this can be achieved without added crime.