America’s Incarceration Rate Is About to Fall Off a Cliff - The Atlantic

[rcjordan]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/prisoner-populations-are-plummeting/683310/

[littleman]

Got a few paragraphs in before the subscription push faded the text out.  A couple of things come to mind.  As a country our lead exposure has been dropping over the decades, which seems to have helped lower violent crime, our drug policies have been more lenient.  I am sure both of those are part of the reason we're having a drop.

Side note:  this doesn't get much attention, but our prisons are filled with neurodivergent people, 80%+ have some type atypical brain.  If you look at it in the right light it starts to almost smell like a modern eugenics program.

[ergophobe]

I'm also paywalled out, but I think the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 is having an effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_Reform_and_Corrections_Act

This was pretty unique in that it was pushed by both Obama and the Kock brothers, endorsed by both the NAACP and law enforcement.