The U.S. public’s support for being tough on crime has been a main determinant of changes to the incarceration rate

The U.S. is famous for being the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world – but what has driven the massive expansion of imprisonment in the last forty years? In new research that tracks public attitudes, Peter K. Enns finds that the public’s punitiveness is closely related to changes in the incarceration rate. He suggests that this stems not only from voters enacting laws such as ‘Three Strikes’, but also through the influence on criminal justice policy of state and federal legislators, who rely on public support for reelection.