Collaborative Research: State Variation in Mass Incarceration Reforms

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After years of increasing incarceration in the United States, recently many states have passed reforms aimed at reducing their prison populations. However, not all states have embraced reform of their incarceration rates and policies. This project will examine what has led some states but not others to initiate new policies that could reduce rates of imprisonment. Consequently, this project takes advantage of the shift in national context and the new variation in state level reforms to assess how states create or impede significant reforms of their incarceration policies.The project will examine legislative incarceration reform efforts in several states between 2000 and 2016. To do so, the project will use a paired case study comparison design. Three sets of state-pairs in different geographical regions will be matched on theoretically relevant variables known to correlate with penal policy and incarceration rates. The matched state-pairs design allows for variation in extent of reform. Data for the project will include archival and legislative documents, media content, and interviews. De-identified data from the project will be made publicly available. In this way, the project will help determine why some states have enacted incarceration reform, while others have been impeded in doing so. The project also will help identify effective strategies, resources, and processes with the most potential to better understand unnecessary incarceration within different state contexts.