Who's in Prison in North Carolina?

Who is in North Carolina’s prisons? I recently read a book called Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. As the subtitle indicates, it examines the true causes of the incarceration rate in the United States. Professor Pfaff argues that the nationwide increase in the prison population is not the result of what he calls the “Standard Story,” a three-prong narrative often used to explain it: non-violent drug crimes pursued as part of the war on drugs, mandatory minimum sentences, and the economic incentives surrounding private prisons. Instead, he attributes much of the growth in the prison population to the political incentives and power of prosecutors. I won’t do a full review of the book here, except to say that I think it’s excellent and that readers of this blog would enjoy and benefit from it. What I want to do instead, at least for today, is look at the extent to which Pfaff’s refutation of the Standard Story is borne out by data on North Carolina’s prison population. Let’s start by putting North Carolina’s prison population in context. Today, the prison population sits at 37,208. That’s significantly below the October 2009 peak of roughly 42,000 inmates, and about the same number of inmates we had back in 2006. Three factors explain much of the decline. First, the General Assembly amended Structured Sentencing in 2009 to allow defendants with one prior record point to [...]