Critical Junctures and Conditions of Change: Exploring the Fall of Prison Populations in US States
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Author | Susanne Karstedt,Michael Koch,Tiffany Bergin |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663917747342 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Critical Junctures and
Conditions of Change:
Exploring the Fall of Prison
Populations in US States
Susanne Karstedt
Griffith University, Australia
Tiffany Bergin
Kent State University, USA
Michael Koch
Department of Social Planning, Germany
Abstract
State prison populations in the United States have been regularly declining since 2009,
and, at the end of 2014, the combined federal and state prison population was at its
lowest level since 2005. Criminologists were caught by surprise by this development in
the country that epitomized contemporary ‘mass incarceration’. Their theoretical
accounts were steeped in a ‘punitive worldview’ that left no space for the stabilization
and eventual decline in mass incarceration in the United States. This article focuses on
policy processes, rather than structural conditions, as drivers of penal change. The article
begins with an overview of theories of punishment and their shortcomings. The
framework that guides our study is based on the concept of ‘critical junctures’, which are
seedbeds of long-term transformative change that present opportunities and constraints
for actors in the penal field. The empirical research presented here analyses the adoption
of legal reforms aimed at reducing mass incarceration by the 50 US states. We find that a
trifecta of conflicting actors – legal, political and public – accounts for the complex and
sometimes contradictory ways in which states move towards penal reform.
Corresponding author:
Susanne Karstedt, Griffith University, Mt Gravatt Campus, 176 Messines Ridge Rd, Upper Mt Gravatt,
Queensland 4122, Australia.
Email: s.karstedt@griffith.edu.au
Social & Legal Studies
2019, Vol. 28(1) 58–80
ªThe Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0964663917747342
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
Keywords
Comparative case analysis, critical junctures, legal change, mass incarceration, theories of
punishment, United States
Introduction
At the end of the last century, crime rates began to fall in the United States and in most
Western democracies. Criminologists were mostly caught by surprise by this develop-
ment, as they had mainly predicted an unprecedented increase – particularly in violent
crime – in these countries. Criminologists equally failed to predict the decrease in
imprisonment in the United States, the country that epitomized contemporary ‘mass
incarceration’ at the beginning of this century. Yet the signs of such a turn could not
and cannot be disputed. In 2009, for the first time in 38 years, the number of prisoners in
US state prisons dropped by 0.3%, after an unabated increase of 708%since the 1970s.
Leading states showing the drop in prisoner numbers were California with more than
4000, Michigan with more than 3000 and five other states with about 1000 prisoners or
less, including Texas. In sum, 26 US states reduced their numbers of prisoners, while
24 increased their number – but none by more than about 2200 in Pennsylvania
(Pew Center on the States, 2010). Was this just exceptional weather or real climate
change, as Jonathan Simon (2012) asked?
As it turned out, it was climate change.
1
State prison populations have been regularly
declining since 2009, and, at the end of 2014, the combined federal and state prison
population was at its lowest level since 2005 (Friedman, 2015; Montopoli, 2013; Knafo,
2014). Between 2014 and 2015, the state prison population fell by a further 2%and the
federal prison population fell by 7%. This was the largest decline since 1978 (Carson and
Anderson, 2016). Although not every state experienced a decline, some states witnessed
particularly dramatic decreases over a longer time period. The prison populations in New
York and New Jersey, for example, fell by more than a quarter from 1999 to 2012 (Mauer
and Ghandnoosh, 2015). In addition, the number of individuals under supervision in the
US adult correctional system declined by 115,600 in 2015, which amounted to the lowest
rate detected since 1994 (Kaeble and Glaze, 2016). In 2009, 29 US states had imple-
mented legal changes to reduce reliance on incarceration (Brown, 2013), which
increased to 41 and 45 states in 2013 and 2015, respectively, with a range of different
legislative initiatives (Vera Institute of Justice, 2014, 2016).
It was a climate change not only in numbers but in the attitudes of politicians, experts
and members of the public (Karstedt, 2013, 2015; Thielo et al., 2016). In a 2013 speech,
the former US Attorney General Eric Holder (2013) announced, ‘Too many people go to
too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason. It is time to ask
ourselves some fundamental questions about our criminal justice system’. The change
emerged from unexpected quarters and involved unforeseen actors and coalitions who
initialized the downsizing of the prison population, such as Republicans in Texas and
Michigan, and the population of California. Prominent Republicans demanded that
‘conservatives must lead the way to fix [the criminal justice system]’ and increasingly
saw prisons as representing ‘big government waste’ (Dagan and Teles, 2012: 20). Other
Karstedt et al. 59
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