The headline-making announcement last week that one in 100 adult Americans is incarcerated rightly raised alarms; the news highlights a national embarrassment. According to a study conducted by the Pew Center on the States, more than 2.3 million Americans now serve time behind bars, a larger prison population than in any other country, including China, which has four times as many citizens. This survey is yet another warning of a growing crisis that calls for more rehabilitative and preventative measures at the national and community levels.

This is not a crisis that surprised the nation suddenly. Policy makers have known for decades that the prison population was growing, and doing so faster than the general population. This latest study did not uncover any hidden statistics – it simply calculated incarceration rates using a different method, delivering a wake-up call to those who thought rampant prison overcrowding and spiraling corrections costs would somehow abate. Some dismiss these problems as the price for safe streets. Unfortunately, that price has become too great for many states to bear.

Some federal and state lawmakers have taken real steps to reduce incarceration rates by reforming the prison system and some of the laws that place so many inmates in it. Reducing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes involving drug possession — which have sometimes put drug users in prison for longer terms than those convicted of violent assaults — is a good first step. In some cases, law-and-order legislators have tacitly endorsed prison reforms simply because prisons are overflowing, forcing corrections departments to grant early release to thousands of inmates in states like Texas and possibly California, according to a Feb. 23 San Francisco Chronicle article. Changing sentencing practices is better than making it seem prisoners are being rewarded for prisoners’ budget constraints.

Sentencing reforms will help heal communities torn apart by prison culture, but in the long run, the federal government must push for better crime prevention techniques in low-income, gang plagued communities. The best way to do this is through education — not just in public schools, but though community centers, merit scholarships and continuing adult education. State and federal lawmakers should better fund after-school programs starting at the pre-school level to show poor children their potential by obeying the law. Too often, under-funded programs designed to educate children from a young age turn into TV-watching sessions for toddlers. From high school into community college, states should impose stricter standards — standards that go beyond reading a student’s test score — to identify troubled students who see education as a dead end and try to keep them within the bonds of law-abiding society. States should view this as a cost-saving investment rather than an expense; drawing at-risk youth away from a life of crime saves in the long run on corrections costs.

At the prison level, states must do more to provide inmates with chances to succeed that serve as an alternative to a return to crime. States should provide earlier release for good behavior to allow the incarcerated to turn their lives around before prisons turn them into hardened criminals. They also need decent job opportunities upon release. Discriminating against former felons may seem like no less than what criminals deserve, but society suffers the consequences of turning former inmates down for meaningful jobs as soon as they return to crime out of desperation. The best way to rehabilitate prisoners is to give them the education they need to find fulfilling jobs after their release. Otherwise, prisons truly become revolving doors.

In the long run, the government alone will not solve prison overcrowding by any means. The United States cannot be compared to other countries because Americans’ fundamental perceptions of crime and punishment are unique. For many complex reasons, Americans place less of a social stigma upon crime and prison time. This fact will never change from the top down; it must happen from the grassroots level and involve almost every American. When our society changes the public perception of crime, especially in poor communities, lower crime rates are sure to follow.