Ending Mass Incarceration

Abstract

Abstract Critics on both the left and the right increasingly use the term “mass incarceration” to call attention to the unprecedented scale of, and racial inequities in, the U.S. criminal legal system—and the havoc they wreak. This book shows that the criminal legal response to lawbreaking has continued to intensify even as lawmakers increasingly embrace criminal justice reform. It also identifies three dynamics that help explain why mass incarceration persists despite plummeting crime rates and widespread efforts to reduce prison populations. These incarcerative forces include the political and cultural dynamics surrounding the issue of violence, resistance to criminal legal system reform in suburban and especially rural counties, and the failure of the most popular drug policy reforms (including drug courts) to meaningfully reduce the reach of the criminal legal system or racial inequities in it. The second part of the book identifies three broad political and policy shifts that would significantly reduce the scale of punishment while also addressing the social problems to which it is a (misguided) response. These include the enactment of a twenty-year maximum sentence and the expansion of restorative justice principles and practices that offer alternative ways of promoting accountability and healing. Meaningful harm-reduction-based drug policy reforms, including the expansion of alternative responses to low-level crime and disorder that operate outside the criminal legal system, enhanced access to medication-assisted treatment, and investment in low-income housing, including Housing First initiatives, are also needed.