The United States' incarceration crisis: cautionary lessons for Australian sentencing

The United States imprisons more people than any nation in the world. Incarceration levels in America have quadrupled in the past four decades. This has resulted in a considerable financial burden to the community, which is no longer readily sustainable. Many jurisdictions in the United States are now attempting to reduce prison numbers. However, no overarching solution has been proposed or implemented. Prison numbers in Australia are about one-quarter of that in America. However, Australian incarceration levels are dramatically increasing – there has been more than a three-fold increase in the past 30 years. Further, the cost of imprisonment in Australia is more than three times that in the United States. Thus, there are parallels that are emerging between the United States and Australia, in terms of the rate of increase in prison numbers and the cost per capita to the community of the spending on prisons. In this article, the authors discuss the incarceration and sentencing crisis in the United States with a view to exploring lessons that may be relevant to the Australian setting.