Why Are So Many Americans In Prison

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Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

Author : Steven Raphael
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610448162
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? by : Steven Raphael

Download or read book Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? written by Steven Raphael and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1975 and 2007, the American incarceration rate increased nearly fivefold, a historic increase that puts the United States in a league of its own among advanced economies. We incarcerate more people today than we ever have, and we stand out as the nation that most frequently uses incarceration to punish those who break the law. What factors explain the dramatic rise in incarceration rates in such a short period of time? In Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll analyze the shocking expansion of America’s prison system and illustrate the pressing need to rethink mass incarceration in this country. Raphael and Stoll carefully evaluate changes in crime patterns, enforcement practices and sentencing laws to reach a sobering conclusion: So many Americans are in prison today because we have chosen, through our public policies, to put them there. They dispel the notion that a rise in crime rates fueled the incarceration surge; in fact, crime rates have steadily declined to all-time lows. There is also little evidence for other factors commonly offered to explain the prison boom, such as the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill since the 1950s, changing demographics, or the crack-cocaine epidemic. By contrast, Raphael and Stoll demonstrate that legislative changes to a relatively small set of sentencing policies explain nearly all prison growth since the 1980s. So-called tough on crime laws, including mandatory minimum penalties and repeat offender statutes, have increased the propensity to punish more offenders with lengthier prison sentences. Raphael and Stoll argue that the high-incarceration regime has inflicted broad social costs, particularly among minority communities, who form a disproportionate share of the incarcerated population. Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? ends with a powerful plea to consider alternative crime control strategies, such as expanded policing, drug court programs, and sentencing law reform, which together can end our addiction to incarceration and still preserve public safety. As states confront the budgetary and social costs of the incarceration boom, Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? provides a revealing and accessible guide to the policies that created the era of mass incarceration and what we can do now to end it.

Do Prisons Make Us Safer?

Author : Steven Raphael
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610444655
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Do Prisons Make Us Safer? by : Steven Raphael

Download or read book Do Prisons Make Us Safer? written by Steven Raphael and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2009-01-22 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails more than quadrupled between 1975 and 2005, reaching the unprecedented level of over two million inmates today. Annual corrections spending now exceeds 64 billion dollars, and many of the social and economic burdens resulting from mass incarceration fall disproportionately on minority communities. Yet crime rates across the country have also dropped considerably during this time period. In Do Prisons Make Us Safer? leading experts systematically examine the complex repercussions of the massive surge in our nation’s prison system. Do Prisons Make Us Safer? asks whether it makes sense to maintain such a large and costly prison system. The contributors expand the scope of previous analyses to include a number of underexplored dimensions, such as the fiscal impact on states, effects on children, and employment prospects for former inmates. Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll assess the reasons behind the explosion in incarceration rates and find that criminal behavior itself accounts for only a small fraction of the prison boom. Eighty-five percent of the trend can be attributed to “get tough on crime” policies that have increased both the likelihood of a prison sentence and the length of time served. Shawn Bushway shows that while prison time effectively deters and incapacitates criminals in the short term, long-term benefits such as overall crime reduction or individual rehabilitation are less clear cut. Amy Lerman conducts a novel investigation into the effects of imprisonment on criminal psychology and uncovers striking evidence that placement in a high security penitentiary leads to increased rates of violence and anger—particularly in the case of first time or minor offenders. Rucker Johnson documents the spill-over effects of parental incarceration—children who have had a parent serve prison time exhibit more behavioral problems than their peers. Policies to enhance the well-being of these children are essential to breaking a devastating cycle of poverty, unemployment, and crime. John Donohue’s economic calculations suggest that alternative social welfare policies such as education and employment programs for at-risk youth may lower crime just as effectively as prisons, but at a much lower human cost. The cost of hiring a new teacher is roughly equal to the cost of incarcerating an additional inmate. The United States currently imprisons a greater proportion of its citizens than any other nation in the world. Until now, however, we’ve lacked systematic and comprehensive data on how this prison boom has affected families, communities, and our nation as a whole. Do Prisons Make Us Safer? provides a highly nuanced and deeply engaging account of one of the most dramatic policy developments in recent U.S. history.

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States

Author : Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 9780309298018
Total Pages : 800 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis The Growth of Incarceration in the United States by : Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration

Download or read book The Growth of Incarceration in the United States written by Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States has increased fivefold during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines policy changes that created an increasingly punitive political climate and offers specific policy advice in sentencing policy, prison policy, and social policy. The report also identifies important research questions that must be answered to provide a firmer basis for policy. This report is a call for change in the way society views criminals, punishment, and prison. This landmark study assesses the evidence and its implications for public policy to inform an extensive and thoughtful public debate about and reconsideration of policies.

Why Are So Many Black Men in Prison?

Author : Demico Boothe
Publisher : Full Surface Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0979295300
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (792 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Are So Many Black Men in Prison? by : Demico Boothe

Download or read book Why Are So Many Black Men in Prison? written by Demico Boothe and published by Full Surface Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African-American males are being imprisoned at an alarming and unprecedented rate. Out of the more than 11 million black adult males in the U.S. population, nearly 1.5 million are in prisons and jails with another 3.5 million more on probation or parole or who have previously been on probation or parole. Black males make up the majority of the total prison population, and due to either present or past incarceration is the most socially disenfranchised group of American citizens in the country today. This book, which was penned by Boothe while he was still incarcerated, details the author's personal story of a negligent upbringing in an impoverished community, his subsequent engagement in criminal activity (drug dealing), his incarceration, and his release from prison and experiencing of the crippling social disenfranchisement that comes with being an ex-felon. The author then relates his personal experiences and realizations to the seminal problems within the African-American community, federal government, and criminal justice system that cause his own experiences to be the same experiences of millions of other young black men. This book focuses on the totality of how and why the U.S. prison system became the largest prison system in the world, and is filled with relevant statistical and historical references and controversial facts and quotes from notable persons and sources.

Prison Nation

Author : Paul Wright
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135342563
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (353 download)

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Book Synopsis Prison Nation by : Paul Wright

Download or read book Prison Nation written by Paul Wright and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Race, Incarceration, and American Values

Author : Glenn C. Loury
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262260948
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis Race, Incarceration, and American Values by : Glenn C. Loury

Download or read book Race, Incarceration, and American Values written by Glenn C. Loury and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why stigmatizing and confining a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to all Americans. The United States, home to five percent of the world's population, now houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates. Our incarceration rate—at 714 per 100,000 residents and rising—is almost forty percent greater than our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). More pointedly, it is 6.2 times the Canadian rate and 12.3 times the rate in Japan. Economist Glenn Loury argues that this extraordinary mass incarceration is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy. Instead, it is the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Whatever the explanation, Loury argues, the uncontroversial fact is that changes in our criminal justice system since the 1970s have created a nether class of Americans—vastly disproportionately black and brown—with severely restricted rights and life chances. Moreover, conservatives and liberals agree that the growth in our prison population has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Stigmatizing and confining of a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to Americans. Loury's call to action makes all of us now responsible for ensuring that the policy changes.

Why are So Many Black Men in Prison?

Author : Demico Boothe
Publisher : Full Surface Publishing
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Why are So Many Black Men in Prison? by : Demico Boothe

Download or read book Why are So Many Black Men in Prison? written by Demico Boothe and published by Full Surface Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published three years before Michelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW, which is strikingly similar, WHY ARE SO MANY BLACK MEN IN PRISON? by Demico Boothe is the first book ever published that is specifically about how the "Prison Industrial Complex" affects the African-American community.

Mass Incarceration on Trial

Author : Jonathan Simon
Publisher : The New Press
ISBN 13 : 1595587691
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (955 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass Incarceration on Trial by : Jonathan Simon

Download or read book Mass Incarceration on Trial written by Jonathan Simon and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly 40 years the United States has been gripped by policies that have placed more than 2.5 million Americans in jails and prisons designed to hold a fraction of that number of inmates. Our prisons are not only vast and overcrowded, they are degrading. Mass Incarceration on Trial examines a series of landmark decisions about prison conditions that has opened an unexpected escape route from this trap of tough on crime' politics. This set of rulings points toward values that could restore legitimate order to American prisons and lead to the end of mass incarceration.'

The Effects of Incarceration and Reentry on Community Health and Well-Being

Author : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309493668
Total Pages : 89 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis The Effects of Incarceration and Reentry on Community Health and Well-Being by : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Download or read book The Effects of Incarceration and Reentry on Community Health and Well-Being written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2020-04-17 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The high rate of incarceration in the United States contributes significantly to the nation's health inequities, extending beyond those who are imprisoned to families, communities, and the entire society. Since the 1970s, there has been a seven-fold increase in incarceration. This increase and the effects of the post-incarceration reentry disproportionately affect low-income families and communities of color. It is critical to examine the criminal justice system through a new lens and explore opportunities for meaningful improvements that will promote health equity in the United States. The National Academies convened a workshop on June 6, 2018 to investigate the connection between incarceration and health inequities to better understand the distributive impact of incarceration on low-income families and communities of color. Topics of discussion focused on the experience of incarceration and reentry, mass incarceration as a public health issue, women's health in jails and prisons, the effects of reentry on the individual and the community, and promising practices and models for reentry. The programs and models that are described in this publication are all Philadelphia-based because Philadelphia has one of the highest rates of incarceration of any major American city. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop.

Incarceration Nations

Author : Baz Dreisinger
Publisher : Other Press, LLC
ISBN 13 : 159051727X
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis Incarceration Nations by : Baz Dreisinger

Download or read book Incarceration Nations written by Baz Dreisinger and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baz Dreisinger travels behind bars in nine countries to rethink the state of justice in a global context Beginning in Africa and ending in Europe, Incarceration Nations is a first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world. Professor, journalist, and founder of the Prison-to-College-Pipeline, Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them, creating a jarring, poignant view of a world to which most are denied access, and a rethinking of one of America’s most far-reaching global exports: the modern prison complex. From serving as a restorative justice facilitator in a notorious South African prison and working with genocide survivors in Rwanda, to launching a creative writing class in an overcrowded Ugandan prison and coordinating a drama workshop for women prisoners in Thailand, Dreisinger examines the world behind bars with equal parts empathy and intellect. She journeys to Jamaica to visit a prison music program, to Singapore to learn about approaches to prisoner reentry, to Australia to grapple with the bottom line of private prisons, to a federal supermax in Brazil to confront the horrors of solitary confinement, and finally to the so-called model prisons of Norway. Incarceration Nations concludes with climactic lessons about the past, present, and future of justice.

Halfway Home

Author : Reuben Jonathan Miller
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316451495
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (164 download)

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Book Synopsis Halfway Home by : Reuben Jonathan Miller

Download or read book Halfway Home written by Reuben Jonathan Miller and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record. Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths. Recently released individuals are faced with jobs that are off-limits, apartments that cannot be occupied and votes that cannot be cast. As The Color of Law exposed about our understanding of housing segregation, Halfway Home shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate. Parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they've paid their debt to society. Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of incarcerated men, captures the stories of the men, women, and communities fighting against a system that is designed for them to fail. It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens. PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist Winner of the 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences 2022 PROSE Awards Finalist 2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner for Cultural Anthropology and Sociology An NPR Selected 2021 Books We Love As heard on NPR’s Fresh Air

Punishing Places

Author : Jessica T. Simes
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520380339
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Punishing Places by : Jessica T. Simes

Download or read book Punishing Places written by Jessica T. Simes and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spatial view of punishment -- The urban model -- Small cities and mass incarceration -- Social services beyond the city : isolation and regional inequity -- Race and communities of pervasive incarceration -- Punishing places -- Beyond punishing places : a research and reform agenda -- Appendix : data and methodology.

City of Inmates

Author : Kelly Lytle Hernández
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469631199
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis City of Inmates by : Kelly Lytle Hernández

Download or read book City of Inmates written by Kelly Lytle Hernández and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernandez documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration. But City of Inmates is also a chronicle of resilience and rebellion, documenting how targeted peoples and communities have always fought back. They busted out of jail, forced Supreme Court rulings, advanced revolution across bars and borders, and, as in the summer of 1965, set fire to the belly of the city. With these acts those who fought the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles altered the course of history in the city, the borderlands, and beyond. This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation's carceral core. It is a story that is far from over.

Homeward

Author : Bruce Western
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610448715
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Homeward by : Bruce Western

Download or read book Homeward written by Bruce Western and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the era of mass incarceration, over 600,000 people are released from federal or state prison each year, with many returning to chaotic living environments rife with violence. In these circumstances, how do former prisoners navigate reentering society? In Homeward, sociologist Bruce Western examines the tumultuous first year after release from prison. Drawing from in-depth interviews with over one hundred individuals, he describes the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrates how poverty, racial inequality, and failures of social support trap many in a cycle of vulnerability despite their efforts to rejoin society. Western and his research team conducted comprehensive interviews with men and women released from the Massachusetts state prison system who returned to neighborhoods around Boston. Western finds that for most, leaving prison is associated with acute material hardship. In the first year after prison, most respondents could not afford their own housing and relied on family support and government programs, with half living in deep poverty. Many struggled with chronic pain, mental illnesses, or addiction—the most important predictor of recidivism. Most respondents were also unemployed. Some older white men found union jobs in the construction industry through their social networks, but many others, particularly those who were black or Latino, were unable to obtain full-time work due to few social connections to good jobs, discrimination, and lack of credentials. Violence was common in their lives, and often preceded their incarceration. In contrast to the stereotype of tough criminals preying upon helpless citizens, Western shows that many former prisoners were themselves subject to lifetimes of violence and abuse and encountered more violence after leaving prison, blurring the line between victims and perpetrators. Western concludes that boosting the social integration of former prisoners is key to both ameliorating deep disadvantage and strengthening public safety. He advocates policies that increase assistance to those in their first year after prison, including guaranteed housing and health care, drug treatment, and transitional employment. By foregrounding the stories of people struggling against the odds to exit the criminal justice system, Homeward shows how overhauling the process of prisoner reentry and rethinking the foundations of justice policy could address the harms of mass incarceration.

A Plague of Prisons

Author : Ernest Drucker
Publisher : New Press, The
ISBN 13 : 1595589538
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (955 download)

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Book Synopsis A Plague of Prisons by : Ernest Drucker

Download or read book A Plague of Prisons written by Ernest Drucker and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The public health expert and prison reform activist offers “meticulous analysis” on our criminal justice system and the plague of American incarceration (The Washington Post). An internationally recognized public health scholar, Ernest Drucker uses the tools of epidemiology to demonstrate that incarceration in the United States has become an epidemic—a plague upon our body politic. He argues that imprisonment, originally conceived as a response to the crimes of individuals, has become “mass incarceration”: a destabilizing force that damages the very social structures that prevent crime. Drucker tracks the phenomenon of mass incarceration using basic public health concepts—“incidence and prevalence,” “outbreaks,” “contagion,” “transmission,” “potential years of life lost.” The resulting analysis demonstrates that our unprecedented rates of incarceration have the contagious and self-perpetuating features of the plagues of previous centuries. Sure to provoke debate and shift the paradigm of how we think about punishment, A Plague of Prisons offers a novel perspective on criminal justice in twenty-first-century America. “How did America’s addiction to prisons and mass incarceration get its start and how did it spread from state to state? Of the many attempts to answer this question, none make as much sense as the explanation found in [this] book.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Inside Private Prisons

Author : Lauren-Brooke Eisen
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231542313
Total Pages : 476 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Inside Private Prisons by : Lauren-Brooke Eisen

Download or read book Inside Private Prisons written by Lauren-Brooke Eisen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration—to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue. Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America. From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America’s largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them? This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing carceral landscape.

Locked In

Author : John Pfaff
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465096921
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis Locked In by : John Pfaff

Download or read book Locked In written by John Pfaff and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Pfaff, let there be no doubt, is a reformer...Nonetheless, he believes that the standard story--popularized in particular by Michelle Alexander, in her influential book, The New Jim Crow--is false. We are desperately in need of reform, he insists, but we must reform the right things, and address the true problem."--Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker A groundbreaking examination of our system of imprisonment, revealing the true causes of mass incarceration as well as the best path to reform In the 1970s, the United States had an incarceration rate comparable to those of other liberal democracies-and that rate had held steady for over 100 years. Yet today, though the US is home to only about 5 percent of the world's population, we hold nearly one quarter of its prisoners. Mass incarceration is now widely considered one of the biggest social and political crises of our age. How did we get to this point? Locked In is a revelatory investigation into the root causes of mass incarceration by one of the most exciting scholars in the country. Having spent fifteen years studying the data on imprisonment, John Pfaff takes apart the reigning consensus created by Michelle Alexander and other reformers, revealing that the most widely accepted explanations-the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on private prisons-tell us much less than we think. Pfaff urges us to look at other factors instead, including a major shift in prosecutor behavior that occurred in the mid-1990s, when prosecutors began bringing felony charges against arrestees about twice as often as they had before. He describes a fractured criminal justice system, in which counties don't pay for the people they send to state prisons, and in which white suburbs set law and order agendas for more-heavily minority cities. And he shows that if we hope to significantly reduce prison populations, we have no choice but to think differently about how to deal with people convicted of violent crimes-and why some people are violent in the first place. An authoritative, clear-eyed account of a national catastrophe, Locked In transforms our understanding of what ails the American system of punishment and ultimately forces us to reconsider how we can build a more equitable and humane society.