Drop in Prison Population Driven by Decrease in Property, Drug, Immigration Offenses

The three-year decline in America’s prison population, a reversal of multiple decades of increase, saw a concurrent decrease in the number of Americans held for property, drug, and immigration offenses, and an increase in those incarcerated for violent offenses.

This conclusion is based on data made available Wednesday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The BJS’s most recent report, Prisoners in 2016, found that state and federal incarceration levels had dropped for three years in a row between 2014 and 2016, reversing decades of near-continuous growth.