Part I. The road to 2020 -- An American surprise -- Crime, law enforcement and sentencing in an era of prison expansion -- Why the prison-boom generation? -- How American institutions encourage and sustain high rates of imprisonment -- What happens next? -- Part II. Strategies of sentencing reform -- Two categorical alternatives to prisons -- Restructuring the governance of imprisonment -- Prosecutorial power and adversarial focus -- Part II. Afterword. Explaining the limited estimates of decarceration -- Part III. Policy problems for a million-cell future -- Strategy and tactics for building institutions -- The epidemic of penal disabilities
Summary
"The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion. Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States. This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?"
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on December 15, 2020)
