Course Correction

With prison closures, Cuomo confronts economic challenges, and his father’s legacy

Crime used to be a formidable political force in New York State. In the ’80s and ’90s, the prison population boomed from 21,000 inmates to 71,000, filling gymnasiums and rented spaces faster than the state could build prisons to house them.

But in the last 15 years, momentum has shifted in the opposite direction. The War on Terror has largely supplanted the War on Drugs.

Reform of the Rockefeller-era drug laws and increased reliance on alternative rehabilitation strategies have helped shrink the prison population to 58,000. A governor’s stance on the death penalty is no longer a make-or-break position. The outrage has dissipated.

The shift is what makes it politically possible for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to attempt to dismantle, brick by brick, his father’s legacy of prison expansion in New York.

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