f65%. Yet crime rates increased during this time as well, by 17% nationally. Thus we see a continuous rise in incarceration forfourteen years, during which crime rose for seven years, then declined for seven years. This does not suggest that incarceration hadno impact on crime, but any such connection is clearly influenced by other factors. A comparison with other nations is instructive inthis regard. The United States incarcerates its citizens at a greater rate than any other nation and at a rate 5-8 times that of mostother industrialized nations. This differential is in part due to a higher rate of violent crime in the U.S. and in part to more severecriminal justice policies. The reasons why other industrialized nations have less violent crime than in the U.S. is clearly not becausethey lock up more offenders and thereby reduce crime. We could debate the various factors that contribute to our high level ofviolence but a failure to incarcerate is clearly not one of them (Mauer 21-24). In order to analyze the decline in crime in the 1990s in greater detail the project team examined the relationship betweenimprisonment and crime at the state level from 1991 to 1998. The reason for doing so is that national trends often obscuresubstantial variations among the states in the degree to which imprisonment is utilized as a response to crime. During the sevenyear period, for example, Texas led the nation with a 144% rise in its rate of incarceration. Maine increased its prison population byjust 2%. The national average increase in the rate of incarceration was 47% (Mauer 21-24). The statistics are significant and they aregratifying. We must be honest, too many families, and too many communities, still live in fear. Violent crimes may be at their lowestlevels in a generation, but even a single crime is one too many. Even if statistics indicate a decline in violent crime, citizens are still concerned about becoming a victim of a crime. Our childr...
