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Budget crises rarely result in productive policy reforms, but criminal justice may be the exception that proves the rule. Pennsylvania is now jumping on the bandwagon of states pursuing ways to balance their budgets by trimming over-inflated incarceration expenses.

“Pennsylvania is still in the stone ages when you talk about prison reform,” Democratic Rep. Kenyatta Johnson recently told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As criminal justice-watchers have seen elsewhere, reform is earning bipartisan support in Harrisburg.

One of the alternatives being considered by Pennsylvania lawmakers is abandoning the War-on-Drugs approach to non-violent offenses, and distributing less severe sentences for drug-related offenses, as well as for parole violations.

“We’ve been tough on crime, but we haven’t been smart on crime,” says Republican Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, who chairs the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee.

The numbers support Greenleaf’s view: in 1980, Pennsylvania’s state prison population was around 8,000. Today, though, the population has ballooned to over 51,000. As for the fiscal consequences? These days, Pennsylvania spends around $2 billion annually on its correction budget — more than 55 times what the state spent 40 years ago.

Now, though, the state — which spends more than 44 other states do on its “tough-on-crime” policies — might be on the verge of a revolution for reform. 

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