The number of people sentenced to state prison from Chester County increased 73.9 percent from 2000 to 2016, writes Samantha Melamed for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This follows a trend that’s seeing mass incarceration move from Philadelphia, which had a 16 percent drop over the same period, to the suburbs.

“District attorneys in rural and suburban areas tend to be much more punitively oriented, with harsh, tough-on-crime rhetoric, and a lot of that follows from the attitude of the people that live in those areas,” said Bret Bucklen, director of research for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. “They’re responding to the people that elected them.”

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From 2006 to 2015, however, Chester County has seen its percentage of people going to state prison decrease. In 2006, 5.2 people per 10,000 residents were sent to state prison. In 2015, that number dropped to 4.5 people, which represents a decrease of 14 percent.

Read more about the rise in state prison sentences in the suburbs in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.

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