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Violence, not stricter drug sentences, drove mass incarceration. New York is proof. For ten years after Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the state legislature increased penalties for drug use beginning in 1973, the number of people in prison for drugs hardly changed. Then, in 1984, the number of people incarcerated for drug crimes started to rise sharply due to violence associated with the crack epidemic. More than a decade later, in 1997, total inmates in New York prisons for drug offenses peaked and began their long decline, mostly because of a reduction in violence. It was only in 2004 and again in 2009 that the state legislature reduced penalties, and the declining rate of incarceration for drug crimes didn’t change after those two years.
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