America’s incarceration rate is in decline

  From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, the proportion of Americans in prison each year never exceeded 120 per 100,000

That's a funny way of saying 0.12%. Is there a reason for this? It sure doesn't make it easy to compare the numbers they're giving with other numbers given as percentages.

I guess if you're considering a sufficiently small population you could go from ~600,000 people in Vermont * 120/100,000 -> ~720 imprisoned people in Vermont trivially, but we're the second smallest state. This certainly doesn't scale to cities over a million. At least I'd start having to think harder about it.

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this is great news. but...

i fear the new avenues of business sought by companies that operate for-profit prisons - i don't expect they'll just eat the losses of declining populations in their main moneymakers, and we're already starting to see them work on detention facilities for DHS etc.

It's unclear if the decline in prisoners stems from a decline in crime. While I generally believe the statistics that violent crime has decreased, it may be the case that the judicial system and even the government in general just have no enthusiasm for prosecuting or punishing it.

In short, no, they won't stop locking it up. They wouldn't even if there was a decline in petty crime... those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5.