The cost of such a high incarceration rate hasn’t been lost on lawmakers in this era of budget deficits. Over the past few years, numerous states have released prisoners early to reduce incarceration costs. California granted early release to some 1,500 inmates this year, and the state hopes to reduce its prison population by a total of 6,500.
But those early releases have proven controversial, both for political and public safety reasons. The New York Times reported earlier this year:
In February, lawmakers in Oregon temporarily suspended a program they had expanded last year to let prisoners, for good behavior, shorten their sentences (and to save $6 million) after an anticrime group aired radio advertisements portraying the outcomes in alarming tones. “A woman’s asleep in her own apartment,” a narrator said. “Suddenly, she’s attacked by a registered sex offender and convicted burglar.”