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In Brief: Why Has New York’s Prison Population Declined?

New York’s faster-than-average decarceration has led to dozens of prison closures.

Chris Gelardi · December 19, 2024

Photograph of an empty prison cell with the door open, showing an empty bed with no sheets.

Some of New York's prisons are operating far below capacity. | Photo: RDNE Stock Project / Pexels

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New York’s prison population has been declining for decades, and at a faster pace than the national prison population — from a high of over 70,000 in 1999 to about 33,500 today. As a result, New York shuttered 24 prisons in the two decades leading to 2023, and a provision in this year’s state budget allowed the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to quickly close up to five more. It has so far pulled the trigger on two: the notorious Great Meadow prison, just north of Albany, and Sullivan Correctional Facility, near the Catskills.

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Meanwhile, some facilities are operating far below capacity. When the Great Meadow closure was announced, for instance, it employed more security personnel than it housed incarcerated people. Rural communities whose economies depend on a local prison are up in arms about well-paying state government jobs moving elsewhere.

How did we get here?

In the 1970s and ’80s, prompted by a nationwide fear over drugs and rising violence, states and the federal government enacted a slate of policies that sent more people to prison for longer, causing the national prison population to balloon.

In 1973, New York enacted one of the nation’s harshest sentencing regimes. Known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws, they included 15-to-life minimum sentences for selling drugs, including cannabis. The federal government later offered states billions of dollars to construct prisons if they had similar laws on the books; New York received over $216 million.

The national prison population started a slow decline after hitting its peak in the late 2000s. In New York, prison decarceration has been more rapid.

One factor in New York’s faster-than-average decline is that it has changed its approach to drug offenses. The revision of sentencing laws — including the Rockefeller package — as well as decreased enforcement of drug crimes and initiatives that gave people convicted of them an opportunity to avoid prison time all contributed to a steady decline in the prison population.

While the number of people imprisoned for crimes categorized as violent fell by 29 percent over the past three decades, the number imprisoned for drugs fell by 87 percent — from about 23,000 to 3,000 — according to data compiled by the Vera Institute’s Greater Justice New York project and shared with New York Focus.

In 1994, drug convictions accounted for about a third of the prison population. They now make up less than 10 percent.

New York City, where over 40 percent of state residents live, has disproportionately contributed to the state’s reduction in drug imprisonments — and to its decreasing prison population overall.

The number of people sent to prison from the city dropped more than 70 percent over the last three decades, whereas the prison population from outside the city is roughly the same as it was in the mid-1990s.

The difference is particularly stark for prison admissions related to violent crime. Those from the city decreased by a quarter between 1999 and 2022, while they increased by over a third throughout the rest of the state.

That’s partly because New York City has seen a drop in reported violent crime since the ’90s. It’s also a result of policy decisions. Starting in the late 2000s — while the New York City Police Department was cracking down on low-level offenses in Black and low-income neighborhoods — the city’s court system aggressively pursued “diversion” initiatives, which allow people convicted of certain crimes to avoid incarceration if they participate in substance treatment, counseling, or other support programs.

Politics likely played a role in the discrepancy between New York City and other regions. Prosecutors and courts are afforded discretion in whether to send people to prison and for how long. Liberal New York City has seen a concerted pushback against mass incarceration and aggressive policing uncommon in more conservative areas of the state. District attorneys and judges — both elected positions in New York — are in tune with the attitudes of their voters.

As with many social trends, Covid-19 threw a wrench in New York’s prison decarceration. For the first time since the 1990s, the state prison population has increased for two years in a row.

That’s likely in part due to increased crime. Jurisdictions across the United States experienced the uptick in interpersonal violence that accompanied the social and economic upheaval of a global pandemic.

An overhead view of Great Meadow Correctional Facility

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There are likely also bureaucratic reasons for the slight rise in recent prison admissions. Even though peak Covid saw increased violence, courts were either shut down or operating at limited capacity, leaving many who would be convicted waiting for court dates; admissions increased as courts worked through the backlog. Quarantine procedures also delayed custody transfers, leaving people sentenced to prison time stuck in their county jails.

It’s still too early to tell where, after the peak of the pandemic, New York’s prison population trajectory is headed.