Billion-dollar proposal would encourage states like Kentucky to rethink sentencing to reduce prison populations

By Mark Richardson
Public Press Service

In Kentucky, approximately 37,000 people are behind bars, making for one of the highest incarceration rates in the country. A new proposal has been made to reduce these numbers, but it will require approval from Congress.

It's known as the Public Safety and Prison Reduction Act, and it would encourage states to rethink their sentencing policies and reduce their prison populations.

Hernandez Stroud, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, which initiated the proposal, noted that state prisons are the central problem of mass incarceration, holding 87 percent of the nation's inmates.

“Congress could help states break the cycle of excessive imprisonment and its devastating impact on families and communities,” Stroud argued. “By providing funding to incentivize both reducing the state’s prison population and implementing humane alternatives.”

Statistics from the Prison Policy Initiative show that Kentucky ranks among the top 10 states in terms of the number of people incarcerated. The figures show that the state imprisons 889 people per 100,000 citizens, well above the national average of 608 per 100,000 people.

Justice reform advocates have pointed out that if Kentucky were a country, it would rank among the top 10 in the world in incarceration rates.

Kungu Njuguna, a political strategist for the Kentucky branch of the ACLU, said his state has gone backwards in reducing its prison population.

“A report that came out about a year or two ago said that over the last decade, Kentucky has passed 10 times as many bills that create new crimes and increase penalties for existing crimes than those that reduce penalties or reduce crimes,” Njuguna said.

Under the federal proposal, if the 25 states with the largest prison populations could reduce their populations by 20 percent, nearly 180,000 fewer people would be behind bars. However, Congress has yet to approve the Public Safety and Prison Reduction Act. Its estimated price of $1 billion could be one of the reasons.