A popular belief among many Americans is that America is number one.

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While the United States certainly can be a wonderful place at times, this is largely dependent upon one's socioeconomic standing, gender, race, sexual orientation, religious affiliation...and the list goes on. An area that the United States is unarguably leading the way in is the prison population. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, "Despite making up close to 5% of the global population, the U.S. has nearly 25% of the world’s prison population. Since 1970, [the U.S.] incarcerated population has increased by 700%..."¹ The United States has been using mass incarceration of its citizens as a means to deter and reduce crime for quite some time now.

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Over the past several years we have seen a reduction of crime and a reduction of incarceration, but they are not necessarily correlated.

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The United States government has been enacting different policies which effectively reduce the amount of inmates incarcerated in our prison systems. For example, in 2011 the Supreme Court order California to reduce its prison population by nearly 34,000 inmates.² One can then clearly see how mandated policy changes like this would cause the incarceration rate to drop. However, while some states have reduced their mass incarceration rates, many still operate at overcapacity. Even the Supreme Court order for California only reduced their population from 180% to 137.5% design capacity.² So if the reduction in crime rates is not correlated to these numbers, then what is it that is working to effectively reduce crime?

There are many theories, each with their own flaws, as to why the crime rates are declining in the United States. A couple of these factors are the economic growth which occurred throughout the 90s³ , and the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade which legalized abortions leading to less being children predisposed to crime creating a lag.⁴ While these theories, and others, could be extensively argued on either side we can most certainly look at other countries for examples

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Social rehabilitation is a powerful tool that has reduced crime within the borders of Sweden.

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The total prison population of Sweden is 5,979⁵, out of a total population of 10,043,585⁶ , with a recidivism rate of 40%⁷ over a three year period, significantly lower than the 67.8%⁸ in the US for the same time-frame. Sweden's crime rate and inmate population has dropped so significantly that they've had to close down many prisons, some have even been purchased and renovated into hotels like the Långholmen prison near Stockholm which proudly boasts, "We have turned an old prison into a unique, inviting and exciting hotel."⁹

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A key factor to this social rehabilitation is altering the policies, language and stigmas surrounding those who are incarcerated.¹⁰ Prisoners in the United States are highly stigmatized as morally corrupt individuals. Policies bar felons from voting and receiving government assistance in many states, though a growing number are beginning to lift these restrictions.¹¹ While in Sweden policy makers have allowed prisoners to have all the same rights as citizens who are not incarcerated.¹⁰ Keeping their rights as citizens while incarcerated allows for a large portion of the stigma attached to prisoners to dissipate. Chapter two, Section 9 of the Swedish Prison Treatment Act of 1974 states, "A prisoner shall be treated with respect for his human dignity and with understanding for the special difficulties connected with a sojourn in prison."¹² The humane treatment of prisoners allows the individuals to be more willing to participate in rehabilitation programs that are offered, which leads to the next point.

Crime is an extremely complex socially constructed idea, and why people commit crime is even more nuanced than the idea itself. A large number of factors play into why people commit crime, one common factor (though not deciding, remember that crime has a large number of different factors at play) is unemployment.¹³ Unemployment too is extremely nuanced, but several factors that affect such are mental & physical health, and education.¹⁴ The prison and probation system in Sweden works closely with other organizations to ensure that the prison sentence acts as a form of rehabilitation rather than a strict form of punishment. Prisons work with social, health, educational, and labor market services to give the inmates the greatest opportunity to succeed upon release.¹⁰ Inmates who have their health, education, and other services taken care of are much less likely to relapse and be put back into the prison system.

In conclusion, mass incarceration is ineffective at reducing crime, while changing policies, language, and stigmas attached to prisoners, and offering full rehabilitation services seems to have a positive impact on reduction rates. Many of the states are beginning to take on policies which echo these findings, but there are still many places which continue to fuel the mass incarceration rates. The prison systems in the United States are strictly for punishment, which has shown time and time again to create psychologically subversive behaviors.¹⁵ Perhaps the United States should reevaluate their policies regarding how prisons operate and work in the humane treatment of those incarcerate.

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Cited Literature

¹“Mass Incarceration.” American Civil Liberties Union, http://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration
²“Reducing Prison Overcrowding in California.” A Status Report: Reducing Prison Overcrowding in California, 5 Aug. 2011, http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2011/crim/overcrowding_080511.aspx
³Roeder, Oliver K., et al. “What Caused the Crime Decline?” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015, doi:10.2139/ssrn.2566965
⁴Donohue, John, and Steven Levitt. “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000, doi:10.3386/w8004
⁵“Sweden.” Sweden | World Prison Brief, 1 Jan. 1970, http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/sweden.
⁶“World Population Prospects - Population Division.” United Nations, United Nations, http://www.population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/
⁷“Recidivism.” Brottsförebyggande Rådet, http://www.bra.se/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/crime-statistics/recidivism.html.
⁸“Recidivism.” National Institute of Justice, http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx
⁹“Långholmen Hotel | Södermalm | Stockholm.” Långholmen, 17 Apr. 2019, http://www.langholmen.com/en/hotell/
¹⁰Svensson, Svenolov. "Imprisonment--A Matter of Letting People Live or Stay Alive? Some Reasoning From A Swedish Point of View." Journal of Correctional Education, Vol. 47 Issue 2, Jun1996. p69-72.
¹¹“More States Lift Welfare Restrictions for Drug Felons.” The Pew Charitable Trusts, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/08/09/more-states-lift-welfare-restrictions-for-drug-felons.
¹²Swedish Parliment. "The Prison Treatment Act." SFS 1974:203. http://www.legislationline.org/download/action/download/id/3391/file/Sweden_Prison_Treatment_Act_1974_amended_until_2006_en.pdf
¹³Chang, Juin-jen, Wu, Chi-Hsin. "Crime, Job Searches, and Economic Growth." Atlantic Economic Journal. Vol. 40 Issue 1, Mar2012, p3-19. 17
¹⁴Mincer, Jacob. "Education and Unemployment." The National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Program: Labor Studies. 1991. doi:10.3386/w3838
¹⁵“Punishment Doesn't Work.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-our-way/201401/punishment-doesnt-work