A Sampling of Justice Reinvestment Statistics

With Thanksgiving tomorrow, today’s post will be the last of the week. That means it is the last post before December 1, when another batch of new laws comes into effect. Perhaps most notable among them is the new rule limiting punishment for a Class 3 misdemeanor to a fine only for defendants with three or fewer prior convictions. G.S. 15A-1340.23(d). Jeff discussed that change here, and additional School of Government resources are forthcoming. The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission recently posted the revised version of the misdemeanor sentencing grid here. Speaking of the Sentencing Commission, I recently participated in the annual meeting of that body’s Forecasting Technical Advisory Group. The group advises the Commission staff in the preparation of its statutorily mandated—and famously accurate—prison population projections. We review all sorts of data in the process, including changes to the state population, juvenile justice trends, arrest rates, court filings, and, of course, sentencing and correctional data. Two years into Justice Reinvestment, some interesting things are happening. Here is a collection of data highlights, some of which came from the forecasting meeting and some from other sources. Prison population. The prison population is down dramatically. As of today there are 37,820 inmates in prison. The chart below shows the prison population by month over the past 10 years. As you can see, the population is at its lowest level since 2006. You can also see that the decline in the population actually began before the JRA came into effect, probably for [...]