The politics of punishment in America are slowly moving away from the mass incarceration policies of the past

Decades of punitive crime policies, frequently linked with the ‘war on drugs’, have given the US the highest incarceration rate in the world, with African Americans vastly overrepresented in the prison population. Tim Newburn argues, however, that there may be some small cause for optimism. In a recent speech, the US Attorney-General, Eric Holder, announced changes to the way offenders would be punished, including a desire to reduce the prison population. In addition to Holder’s speech,, the declining use of the death penalty, falling state-level prison populations, and gradual changes to drugs laws, appear to indicate that the politics of punishment in America are beginning to shift.