Stella DeSantis is a longtime financial executive who holds responsibilities with Oppenheimer & Co., Inc., as senior director. Informed on social issues, Stella DeSantis is a firm proponent of prison reform and strongly believes in ensuring that those who are incarcerated for prolonged periods are eventually able to attain their freedom.
With state and federal prison populations having peaked at 1.6 million people in 2008, an 11 percent decrease has occurred in the decade since. As reported in the Huffington Post, with the imprisonment rate in 2016 reaching the lowest levels since 1997, newly released federal data points to an unexpected long-term decrease in criminal activity.
This flies in the face of the beliefs of those in favor of increased incarceration, and who tie lower crime rates to increased rates of imprisonment. Rather than looking toward building new prisons, experts suggest that expanded social programs and an improved corrections process can exert even further gains. There is still much that can be done to scale back a gargantuan prison system that encompasses the largest population of inmates in the world.
