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 A range of ideas for shrinking the swelling U.S. prison
population, now at 2.2 million, was advanced by the Urban Institute,
a policy think tank, in the wake of Obama's historic prison visit
last month and call for congressional sentencing reform legislation.
The Urban Institute unveiled an online tool, called the Prison
Population Forecaster, to measure how the changes would affect the
prison population, which grew exponentially over the past four
decades even as crime dropped to all-time recorded lows.
(http://webapp.urban.org/reducing-mass-incarceration/index.html)
The issue especially resonates in the African-American community,
with black men six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated
in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.
 The tool is meant to help determine what states actually need to do
to trim prison populations by as much as 50 percent, said Urban
Institute researcher Bryce Peterson. It uses data from 15 states
that represent nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison population.
The first example focused on narcotics offenses. Many states have
been reforming their drug laws, and if the number of people
imprisoned for drug offenses were cut in half, that could shrink the
prison population by 7 percent by 2022.
Sentencing reform for property offenses such as burglary could have
an even greater effect, as would rethinking the decision to lock up
parolees who commit technical violations of their release.
Imprisoning half as many parole violators could reduce prison
populations by 14 percent by 2022.
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But with most people in state prisons incarcerated for a violent
offense, the most effective method would be shortening the length of
stays for some violent crimes, the researchers said.
In Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island, reducing the
length of incarceration for violent offenses by 15 percent would cut
the prison population by 50 percent more than reducing drug
admissions, the institute said.
"We believe there is no way to have a substantial impact on mass
incarceration without considering violent offenses," Peterson said.
"Not every person in prison for a 'violent offense' is a murderer or
an imminent danger to the public," he said. "Violent offenses
include simple assaults, (like) a bar fight."
The 15 states in the forecasting tool are Alabama, Georgia,
Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York,
Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington and
Wyoming.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Scott Malone and Peter
Cooney)
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