Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America
ISBN: 9781479829026
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / NYU Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Imprisonment -- United States; Corrections -- United States; Criminal justice Administration of -- United States;

Criminologists Clear (Imprisoning Communities) and Frost (The Punitive State) offer an accessible study of mass incarceration in the U.S. that is theoretically sophisticated and rich in statistical data. Though the prose is sometimes uninspired, the authors make up for this with an unsparing analysis that traces a historical arc over the last 50 years, identifying and indicting the titular "punishment imperative" as a "grand social experiment" that put politics (in the form of tough-on-crime legislation) ahead of an "evidence-based" approach, which recognizes that incarceration is neither the only, nor the best, instrument for dealing with crime. Mandatory sentencing, the "war on drugs," "three-strikes" laws, and the American punitive impulse all come in for intense scrutiny. Condemning the system's disruption of community cohesion through its implicit racism and the institutional hurdles it creates, the authors propose an alternative program that would replace the prison industrial complex with a system that is "smarter on crime." A meticulously organized concluding chapter lays out their proposals with an eye toward reducing sentences and making them more humane for nonviolent offenders. The book merits serious consideration beyond an academic audience. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Todd R. Clear is Provost at Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of Imprisoning Communities and What Is Community Justice? And is the founding editor of the journal Criminology & Public Policy.Frost Natasha A. :

Natasha A. Frost is Associate Dean and Associate Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. Her books include The Punitive State and Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice Policy.