By Liz Komar and Nicole D. Porter

After 50 years of mass incarceration, the United States faces a reckoning. While crime is far below its peak in the early 1990s,1 the country continues to struggle with an unacceptable amount of gun violence.2 Meanwhile, the drug war harms too many Americans and has failed to prevent fatal overdoses from reaching an all-time high.3 A great imbalance in our national approach to public safety, one that relies too heavily on the criminal legal system, has produced excessive levels of punishment and a diversion of resources from investments that would strengthen the capacity of families and communities to address the circumstances that contribute to crime. This report offers five recommendations for policymakers and community members to potentially improve safety without deepening our reliance on extreme sentencing:

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 10p.