For the first time, one out of every one hundred Americans is currently in jail or prison, according to a recent report by the Pew Center. This startling figure ought to give all of us pause and prompt policymakers and citizens to reconsider our priorities.

With 2.3 million prisoners, the United States leads the world in incarceration with the People’s Republic of China, a literal police state with many times the population of the US, placing a distant second with 1.5 million citizens imprisoned. In addition to leading in absolute terms, the US also jails a much higher portion of its population than any other country. 

While a large prison population may satisfy the base desire for vengeance and serve the political needs of elected officials that want to appear “tough on crime,” it offers few tangible benefits and imposes real costs on those in prison, their families and society at large. The Pew Center finds that the record level of incarceration is “saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime.” 

The high cost of incarceration for municipalities and states may finally bring about common sense reform. Budgetary pressures are particularly acute in Ohio, which, despite a looming fiscal crisis, spends nearly two billion dollars a year on its prisons and is on track to be the state with the most inmates in the Midwest. “There isn’t a person in public office that’s not sensitive to the accusation of being soft on crime, but you don’t have to be soft on crime to be smart in dealing with criminals,” said Governor Ted Strickland in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch last month. “We need a rational approach to our criminal justice system… one that’s divorced from the silliness of politics.” 

Fortunately, the large drop in crime in the 1990s and the rise in importance of other issues has created the political breathing space necessary for the kind of practical  reform that our criminal justice system needs.  Crime has virtually disappeared as a national issue; a Gallup poll conducted in late 2007 found that just two percent of respondents believed crime was the most important problem facing the country.

The key to reducing our swelling prison population is reforming our sentencing laws. The spread of mandatory minimum sentencing requirements at the state and federal level, rather than population growth or changes in the crime rate, are responsible for most of the increase in incarceration. 

Not only are these longer sentences largely ineffective, the RAND Corporation found that while both traditional enforcement — such as more arrests, confiscations, prosecutions and standard-length prison terms treatment programs were better at preventing crime than tougher sentences, they are also discriminatory. By meting out harsher punishments for crack than for powdered cocaine, mandatory minimum laws disproportionately affect the poor and minorities. “African Americans account for about 14 percent of the nation’s drug users, yet they make up 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted for drug possession and 74 percent of those sentenced to serve time,” according to Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. 

New guidelines from the US Sentencing Commission aim to shorten the sentences of thousands of crack offenders currently in federal prisons. The sentencing regime represents progress, but given the scale of the problem, more drastic reform is needed. Policymakers at the state and federal level should act quickly to seize this opportunity and end the incarceration of non-violent drug offenders and redirect resources to effective and humane measures including hiring more police, expanding rehabilitation and improving valuable social programs.