The Growth of Imprisonment in California

This article reports on a study of trends in imprisonment in the state of California over the period 1980-91. Documenting and analysing imprisonment in California is important to an international audience for two reasons. First, the pattern in California since 1980 is representative of a widespread trend in the United States of expansion in the scale of the prison enterprise. At least 90 per cent of American states are currently imprisoning offenders at a higher rate than at any other time in the twentieth century. The unprecedented expansion in California prison population is part of this pattern; and studying events in California is one approach to comprehending developments and conditions in most American states. The second reason why California's situation demands attention is that the growth in imprisonment in that state has been singular in both its pace and its magnitude. The number of prisoners in California increased more than fourfold in I years. The current 104,000 prisoners in California is by far the largest prison population in the Western world, more than twice the national prison populations of West Germany and Great Britain. Never has a prison system grown by so much in so short a time during a period