Forecasting How Policy Changes Could Affect Prison Populations

Route Fifty: Estimates of how different policy changes could expand or reduce state prison populations are now available using a new online tool.

The Urban Institute released its Prison Population Forecaster on Wednesday. It lets people adjust prison admissions and sentence lengths for various types of crimes, and to see how these changes affect the number of people expected to be incarcerated in a state during future years.

It’s also possible to model what the different policy choices could mean in terms of racial disparities and costs.

Read article