Why Mass Incarceration Is Looming as a Campaign Issue

America has long had more prison inmates than any other nation. This phenomenon, which has been given the name of mass incarceration, has the potential to be an issue in this year’s presidential campaign. President Donald Trump can point to a bipartisan 2018 measure he signed that shortened some mandatory minimum sentences and gave judges more power to override them. His presumptive Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, has been criticized by Trump and from within his own party for his role in a 1994 law that imposed tougher sentences and funded the expansion of prisons and police forces. Further amplifying the issue: The early release of thousands of state and federal inmates to protect them from the coronavirus, and mass protests over racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of prisoners in U.S. state and federal institutions peaked in 2009 at 1.6 million. In 1960, that number had been 210,000; by 1990 it had jumped to about 775,000. It’s declined slightly in recent years, falling to 1.5 million people in 2018. However, counting people in local jails and detention centers, the number of people behind bars jumps to 2.3 million, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. The U.S. outranks all other nations both in total number of prisoners and rates of incarceration. The U.S. locks up 655 people for every 100,000, compared with 402 in Russia and 118 in China, according to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research.