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Pew Center Research on Prison Time

Thursday, June 7, 2012

“Giving criminals longer sentences is a good way to fight crime”. It’s an effective campaign pitch for politicians. It’s also not always true. A new report by the Pew Center for the States says many low-risk, non-violent criminals could have gotten out of prison sooner with little or no threat to public safety. The result has been costly for taxpayers—10-billion dollars wasted in 2009 alone. Adam Gelb is the head of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project. He says Michigan had the longest average prison term in the U-S…four-point-three years, almost twice as long as it was in 1990.

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