Hard time is harder to come by.
Cops have put fewer criminals behind bars during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure.
The number of lawbreakers incarcerated dropped 33 percent, from 669 per 100,000 people to 448 per 100,000, over the past 12 years, while the national incarceration rate grew 3 percent over the same period, according to state and federal data.
The number of New York City inmates in state prisons fell 34 percent, from 56,370 at the of 2001 to 37,142 at the end of last year, according to city and state corrections figures.
And the number of New York inmates in city jails fell 18 percent, from 14,490 to 11,827 during the same period.
But major felonies also declined — 32 percent — during the Bloomberg era, and the number of murders has dropped in half over the same period.
Hizzoner said the figures show that law enforcement doesn’t have to lock up more people to reduce crime.
Bloomberg chalked up the all-time low imprisonment numbers to proactive police work and innovative programs preventing offenders from returning to the slammer.
He also said changes in state law helped accelerate the trend, such as the overhaul of the Rockefeller sentencing laws covering minor drug busts.
“We think that’s a huge success story, and there is a connection between incarcerating fewer young people and having a lower crime rate,” Bloomberg said. “We’ve kept our city safer, the bottom line, while locking up fewer people.”
Bloomberg toured a Queens alternative incarceration program on Thursday in the final leg of his citywide tour touting the successes of his administration.
He slammed state penitentiaries as bereft of role models, where convicts learn “how to be a worse person.”
“People can give you a hand, they can help you up, but in the end you’re an adult and it’s up to you,” Bloomberg said. “My advice is the days that are bad, just get it out of your mind, don’t focus on it. That’s what I do.”