For more information or to

schedule an interview, contact

Naren Daniel at:
(646) 292-8381 or
naren.daniel@nyu.edu.

Texas Fact Sheet:

What Caused the Crime Decline?
By Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Julia Bowling*
A new Brennan Center report, What Caused the Crime Decline?, examines 14 different theories for the
massive decline in crime across the country over the last two decades. It provides a rigorous
empirical analysis conducted by a team of economics and criminal justice researchers on over 40
years of data, gathered from all 50 states and the 50 largest cities.
New Report Findings
Over the past 40 years, states across the country have sought to fight crime by implementing policies
to increase incarceration. The result: The United States is now the largest jailor in the world. With 5
percent of the worlds population, we have 25 percent of its prisoners.
In Texas, the prison population grew by 316 percent from 1980 to 2013. The state has seen one of
the more remarkable shifts in its prison population. Since its peak in 1999, Texas cut its number of
prisoners by 10.5 percent, to 168,280 by 2013. In 2004, Texas had the nations second highest
incarceration rate; it now has the fourth highest despite a slight uptick in 2013. As incarceration grew
in the 1990s, there was a 205 percent increase in corrections costs. Texas spent $3.191 billion on
corrections in 2013.
At the same time, between 1988 and 2013, crime in Texas dropped by 54 percent. And the national
crime rate was cut in half.
What caused this drop? Was it the explosion in incarceration? Or was it something else?
The reports central findings:

Increased incarceration had a limited effect on reducing crime for the last two
decades: Increased incarceration had some effect, likely somewhere around 0-10 percent,
on reducing crime from 1990 to 2000. Since 2000, however, increased incarceration had an
almost zero effect on crime. Further, a number of states California, Michigan, New Jersey,
New York, and Texas have successfully reduced imprisonment while crime continued to
fall.

* Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Counsel and Julia Bowling is Research Associate at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. They
are co-authors of What Caused the Crime Decline?

Other factors reduced crime: Increased numbers of police officers, some data-driven
policing techniques, changes in income, decreased alcohol consumption, and an aging
population played a role in reducing crime. In particular, this report finds that the policing
technique known as CompStat is associated with a 5 to 15 percent decrease in crime. A
review of past research indicates that consumer confidence and inflation also likely
contributed to crime reduction.

Incarceration & Crime in Texas

As illustrated in Figure 1, Texas imprisons 636 people per 100,000, a higher rate than the U.S.
Several policy decisions may have contributed to the decrease in Texas incarceration rate. In 2005,
the state provided $55 million in incentive funding for probation departments to use sanctions other
than incarceration to respond to parole violators. In 2007, responding to fiscal pressure and
projections that the state would need to spend $500 million on new prisons, legislators appropriated
$241 million to support alternatives to prison, including substance abuse treatment beds, drug
courts, and mental illness treatment programs. In 2009, Texas continued to fund 64 reentry
coordinators. In 2011, the Texas legislature passed two bills, allowing probationers and prisoners to
reduce their probation and sentence lengths by completing programs.
Figure 1: Imprisonment Rates in Texas and the U.S. (1980-2013)

As shown in Figure 2, as incarceration rose from 1980 (when Texas had 40,437 prisoners), the
effectiveness of increased incarceration adding new prisoners steadily declined. By 1995,
imprisonment increased five-fold to 127,766 prisoners, and effectiveness on crime declined to
essentially zero. The marginal effect on crime of adding more people to prisons remains at
essentially zero today.
This reports findings support further reforms to reduce Texass incarcerated population and show
this can be achieved without added crime.

BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE | 2

Figure 2: Effectiveness of Imprisonment on Crime in Texas (1980-2013)

Policing & Crime

One policing approach, CompStat, which instills strong management and data-driven practices,
played a role in bringing down crime in cities where implemented. The introduction of CompStatstyle programs was responsible for a 5 to 15 percent decrease in crime in the 50 largest cities
nationally.
CompStat was widely implemented in American cities starting in the 1990s. In Texas, CompStat was
introduced in El Paso (1997), Arlington (1997), Fort Worth (2002), Dallas (2004), Austin (2008), and
San Antonio (2011).
Little analysis has been conducted on the effectiveness of how police fight crime. CompStat is one of
the most consistent, easily identifiable, and widespread policing techniques employed during the
time period under examination. Although different cities deploy it differently, the general objective is
the same: to implement strong management and accountability within police departments to execute
strategies based in robust data collection to reduce and prevent crime. Our research also found that
increased numbers of police officers also played a role in reducing crime.
Conclusion
Public and political pressure to effectively fight crime and improve public safety has been used to
justify incarceration despite the economic and human toll. This report finds that this one-size fits
all use of imprisonment to punish crime has passed the point of diminishing returns. In essence,
adding more and more people to prison is no longer producing the expected crime control benefits.
As state budgets grow tighter, government should invest in policies that achieve their intended goals.
Prioritizing modern, evidence-based criminal justice policies with record of success over costly and
ineffective over-incarceration seems to be the best way forward in Texas and nationwide.

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