Decarceration in US States, 2010–2024: Inertia and Disruption

In 2010, the total US incarceration rate declined for the first time in more than four decades, led by reductions in state prison populations. This review examines decarceration from 2010 to 2024 and the emerging literature that seeks to explain it. We unpack the contours of state-level changes in prison populations and incarceration rates, highlighting the persistence of deep regional differences that characterize punishment in US states and decarceration's uneven impact on certain groups. We discuss the types of policy levers that states have used as prison populations have declined. After briefly reviewing an explanatory framework for mass incarceration, we integrate findings from our case studies of six states and other scholarly research on the forces that have sustained mass incarceration's inertia and disrupted the penal status quo and high levels of imprisonment. In addition to proposing new research questions, we conclude by suggesting that some US states may no longer fit comfortably within the category of mass incarceration and may be better understood as entering a period of penal hybridization where new decarcerative possibilities have begun to disrupt older penal logics.