Kovach 1

Carly Kovach
Professor: Adam Padgett
English 102 Section 33
October 27th, 2016
Lowering Todays Incarceration Rates:
An Annotated Bibliography
Inquiry: How can we lower the incarceration rates?
Proposed Thesis: I am going to argue that with more education and appropriate sentencing for
certain crimes, the incarceration rates as a whole will decrease in the future.
Intro: Due to my interest in the criminal justice system, one area that I want to discuss is the
incarceration rates, and the factors that affect them. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics,
the United States has had the highest incarceration rate in the world since 2002, with around 500
prisoners for every 100,000 people. To put that in prospective, the normal rate of incarceration
for most countries tends to stay around 100 prisoners per 100,000 people, causing the United
States to house 25 percent of the worlds prison population. Sadly, the age group that tends to
have the biggest affect on the incarceration rates are the people in their 20s and early 30s. The
International Centre for Prison Studies named the top four reasons for the United States having
the highest incarceration rates, with the number one reason being excessive punishment for nonviolent crimes. The other reasons include The War on Drugs, too many long sentences, and
private prisons. It is evident these issues need to be discussed in order for something to be done
to lower these numbers. If more programs were designed to educate people on the different

Kovach 2
reasons they could be incarcerated and each persons sentence directly reflected their crime,
there is no doubt the United States would be able to lower incarceration rates.

Caumont, Andrea. "Americans Skeptical of Value of Enforcing Marijuana Laws." Pew Research
Center RSS. N.p., 2013. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.
Author Andrea Caumont is the social media editor at the Pew Research Center which
explains why this article was given its title. Most people are uninterested in the thought of
incarceration rates, but when an article is given a title such as this, more readers are likely
to browse the content. The article comments on the idea of having lower incarceration
rates if low-level drugs such as marijuana were legalized, stating that, roughly seventytwo percent of Americans say government efforts to enforce marijuana laws cost more
than they are worth. Additionally, sixty- two percent of Americans do not categorize
marijuana as a gateway drug, leaving the remaining thirty-eight percent coming from
people ages sixty-five or older. The article is a good source to use for my research paper
because rather than making the argument purely about legalizing marijuana, it supports
the broader topic of helping to reduce incarceration rates.
DeSilver, Drew. "Feds May Be Rethinking the Drug War, but States Have Been Leading the
Way." Pew Research Center RSS. N.p., 02 Apr. 2014. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.
This article discusses one of the top four reasons for the United States having the highest
incarceration rate that was previously mentioned. The War on Drugs has always been
seen as a zero tolerance policy, resulting in many people forced to do time for an
outrageous number of years due to a small infraction. The article references a Pew

Kovach 3
Research Center report showing that more than sixty-three percent of people believe in
states moving away from mandatory prison sentences for non-violent drug offenders.
Attorney General Eric Holder shared his views on the subject when he called for reduced
sentences for low-level drug offenders in federal cases in hopes to reduce the growth of
the federal prisoner population. He stated, low-level drug offenders wouldnt
automatically be charged with offenses that carried strict mandatory minimum
sentences. This article is directly related to my topic because it is written with the
same stance on the issue as my research paper. It is fairly relevant seeing as not much as
changed in the past two years, and provides the necessary evidence needed to support my
argument of giving prisoners less time for low-level drug crimes. In addition, this source
has high credibility because it comes from an online research center website, and the
author Drew Desilver has written many other articles for this website discussing ongoing
issues in the United States.
Dickinson, Tim. "Crime, Politics And Justice." Rolling Stone 1238 (2015): 34-37. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.
United States politicians are all working together to come up with ways to reduce prison
populations. Texas senator Ted Cruz was quoted as saying, Today, far too many young
menfind themselves subject to sentences of many decades for relatively minor,
nonviolent drug infractionswe should not live in a world of Les Miserables, where a
young man finds his entire future taken away by excessive mandatory minimums. The
article goes on to say that there are more people locked up today for drug offenses alone
than the entire prison system held in 1970. Obviously this has been a preceding issue that

Kovach 4
the United States needs to come to terms with. It has been a problem for too long, and it
is necessary that these politicians take a stand and implement new programs to decrease
the incarceration rates. This article is very useful for my research paper because it shows
just how many people understand this is a big problem and how many believe that change
is needed. This peer reviewed article came from an online library database which shows
its credibility.
Motel, Seth. "Americas New Drug Policy Landscape." Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press RSS. N.p., 02 Apr. 2014. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.
This article discusses one of the options for lowering the incarceration rate in the United
States. People who have serious drug problems need more than jail time for their actions.
This article states that, sixty-seven percent of Americans say that the government
should focus more on providing treatment for those who use illegal drugs such as heroin
and cocaine. Mostly due to health reasons, they need to be given the suitable treatment
for their addiction because drugs that dangerous have the power to kill people. This
article is a credible source because the website it comes from is a research center and the
article provides a sufficient national survey on the topic itself.
Sherman, Lawrence W. "Reducing Incarceration Rates: The Promise of Experimental
Criminology." Crime & Delinquency 46.3 (2000): 299. Academic Search Complete. Web.
18 Oct. 2016.
This article provides a way to lower the incarceration rate by using experimental
criminology. The main idea is to, discover more effective programs for crime prevention
without prison. In essence, we need to create an all-inclusive group of knowledge on

Kovach 5
prevention and other means of legal agreement that would create credible alternatives to
incarcerating people. These experiments will be designed to evaluate the productivity of
rehabilitation programs by allowing implications on casual relationships with a
specifiable degree of certainty. Different designs can potentially misinterpret the
information by saying a program works when it doesnt, or that it is effective when it is
actually ineffective. This article is credible because it was taken from an online database
and the article itself uses multiple references signifying where the information came
from.
Snyder, Howard N., and Jeanne B. Stinchcomb. "Do Higher Incarceration Rates Mean Lower
Crime Rates?." Corrections Today 68.6 (2006): 92-97. Academic Search Complete. Web.
18 Oct. 2016.
This article discusses the relationship between incarcerating more offenders and reducing
crime rates in the United States. The theory between these two concepts is defined in the
article as when, a society relies more on imprisonment as a response to crime, the
amount of crime committed in that society should diminish. Basically that means that
crime rates would be expected to decrease as incarceration rates increase. However, the
reality of that theory can be debated depending on the research done supporting each side
of the claim. This article relates to my research topic because it discusses certain aspects
that can effect the incarceration rate. It comes from an academic database which provides
its credibility, and uses many different research studies to expand on the theory between
higher incarceration rates and and lower crime rates.