Prison overcrowding has developed as a major public issue over the past decade. The increase in violent crime in the United States in the 1970s, together a plea bargaining process that often appeared to favor offenders, led to public outcries to "get tougher on crime." Both President Reagan and President Bush tapped this vein of public discontent by successfully, if inaccurately, labeling their opponents as being soft on crime. Other politicians, particularly at the state level, jumped on the tough on crime bandwagon.
One result of all of this activity were new sentencing guidelines that mandated prison time for more types of offensesand which also lengthened prison stays. While the politicians were getting tough on crime, however, the politicians and citizens from Presidents Reagan and Bush right on down to local politicians and citizens voting in bond elections neglected in some cases and refused in more cases to increase spending on incarceration facilities at the levels required to meet the increasing demand. The outcome, predictably, was prison overcrowding.
Some jurisdictions, in attempts to deal with the problem of prison overcrowding, adopted liberal probation in lieu of incarceration policies for adult non violent offenders. Such policies have not always worked as intended, however, because some classes of non violent offenders notably drug offenders
were excluded from probation programs. In 1992 as an example, 30 percent of the prison population in the State of Washington is comprised of "small time drug offenders, burglars, and others many of whom turned to crime to support their own drug habits who are neither violent nor sexual offenders."1
In the 1990s, no politician federal, state, or local dares to take any action that would permit an opponent to claim that her or she was soft on crime. Similarly, few politicians federal, state, or local will publicly advocate an increase in taxes, r...