In this New Yorker article, John Pfaff, discusses the roles prosecutors have to play in the United States’ booming incarceration rate.
But a recent quantitative analysis by John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham Law School, who also has a Ph.D. in economics, argues that sentencing laws are not the main reason for the increase in the prison population. “For all the tougher sentencing laws, there is not much more time served in prison per prisoner,” he told me. “Prisoners are serving about the same amount of time now as they did in the eighties.” Rather, Pfaff points to prosecutors—more than cops, judges, or legislators—as the principal drivers of the increase in the prison population. “The real change is in the chances that a felony arrest by the police turns into a felony case brought by prosecutors,” he said.
Still, as Pfaff said, “if you are going to reduce the prison population, prosecutors are going to be the ones who have to lead the way.”
Read the full New Yorker article here.