decarcerate means to implement a policy of decarceration; to reduce prison populations. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 85 out of 100.
decarcerate is pronounced /diːˈkɑː.səˌɹeɪt/.
Why “decarcerate” is a great word
DECARCERATE — [Verb] To implement a policy of reducing prison populations, as by releasing prisoners or changing sentencing laws. Formed within English by derivation, modeled on 'incarcerate', replacing the prefix in- with de- (indicating reversal or removal). First attested in 1973. Unlike “release,” a punctual act for an individual, or “rehabilitate,” which seeks to mend the person, “decarcerate” targets the architecture of confinement itself. It is the repealed statute gathering dust, the hollow echo in a shuttered cellblock, the deliberate unthreading of a vast and knotted web—a quiet argument that the state’s greatest power lies not in its capacity to confine, but in its courage to cease.
verb
- To implement a policy of decarceration; to reduce prison populations.“Refusing to decarcerate and now increasing spending on policing that will drive the shuttling of even more Americans into jails and prisons is especially perverse given the recent attention paid to the worsening conditions of confinement and the mistreatment of the incarcerated.”