Mass Incarceration
Definition
The large-scale increase in the use of imprisonment, producing incarceration rates far above historical and international norms. Most closely associated with the United States, which since the 1970s has seen its prison population rise from around 380,000 to approximately 2 million, an incarceration rate of roughly 630 per 100,000.
- Primary region
- United States, from the 1970s onward
- Population growth
- Roughly 380,000 to about 2 million prisoners
- Approx. rate
- Around 630 per 100,000 population
- Comparison basis
- Far above historical and international incarceration norms
Common questions
What is usually cited as driving the rise?+
Researchers point to sentencing policy shifts rather than a rise in crime alone, including mandatory minimums, truth-in-sentencing laws, and the expansion of offenses carrying prison terms from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Does the term apply only to sentenced prisoners?+
Most discussions of mass incarceration also count jail populations awaiting trial or serving short sentences, since pretrial detention contributes substantially to the total confined population at any given time.
Related terms
- Collateral Consequences
- The legal and social penalties that attach to a criminal conviction beyond the sentence itself, including loss of voting rights, ineligibility for...
- Justice Reinvestment
- A policy strategy that proposes redirecting funds spent on incarceration toward community-based services, education, mental health treatment, and substance use programmes in...
- Mandatory Minimum Sentence
- A legislatively fixed minimum period of imprisonment that a judge must impose upon conviction for specified offences, regardless of individual circumstances. Mandatory...
- Recidivism
- The tendency of a person who has been convicted of a crime to reoffend. Measured differently across jurisdictions: by reconviction, by reincarceration,...
- Sentencing Guidelines
- Structured frameworks that recommend or mandate sentence ranges based on the severity of the offence and the offender's criminal history. They aim...