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What would Ronald Reagan do about too-high prison costs?

Why he'd slash the incarceration rate by more than a third! At least that's what he did in California as Governor, according to this fascinating article out of California. Here's a notable excerpt:Rosemary Gartner, a criminologist at the University of Toronto, was studying the history of California?s women?s prisons when she stumbled across an unexpected fact: between 1968 and 1972, the incarceration rate in California dropped by 34 percent. The prison population naturally fluctuates a lot and we?ve seen massive increases over the years (particularly through the ?70s, ?80s and ?90s), but big drops don?t happen very often?and a decline of this scale hasn?t been seen before or since that four-year period. What also surprised Gartner is that the decrease happened just after former President Ronald Reagan took office as governor of California...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on October 05, 2010 (boomark / email).