The past as prologue?: Decarceration in California then and now

Before describing what happened to imprisonment in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we will discuss what research on the increase in imprisonment suggests about ways to reduce prison populations, what scholars have said recently about the possibilities of lowering prison populations, and whether some efforts, both in the past and recently, to reduce imprisonment might provide useful models for California. We then piece together the story behind the most substantial drop in California's prison population in its history. The final section of the article is concerned with whether, and to what extent, the changes carried out in the 1960s and early 1970s could be replicated in the penal and governmental circumstances of 2010. We think lessons of value can be found in the earlier history for California's current problems with imprisonment, but a variety of differences in law, the scale of imprisonment, and the politics of penality will limit the capacity of even the best efforts to reduce the state's prison population. Adapted from the source document.