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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, including California, Michigan,
New Jersey, New York, and Texas, have successfully reduced imprisonment while crime
continued to fall.
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
* 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?
As shown in Figure 2, as incarceration rose from 1980 (when Virginia had 8,920 prisoners), the
effectiveness of increased incarceration adding new prisoners steadily declined. By 2000,
imprisonment increased three-fold to 30,168 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 Virginias incarcerated population and
show this can be achieved without added crime.