Justice Reinvestment – thinking outside the cell

Abstract

In Crime and Punishment in America, Elliot Currie (1998 Currie, E. (1998), Crime and punishment in America: why the solutions to America's most stubborn social crisis have not worked and what will, New York: Henry Holt. [Google Scholar]) notes that, short of major wars, mass imprisonment has been the most thoroughly implemented USA government social programme of recent times. In the last two decades, the increase in imprisonment in the UK has outpaced even that of the USA, (Figure 2). This increase in imprisonment arises, not from increasing insecurity about crime rates, but rather from increasing social insecurity and ideology, according to Loïc Wacquant (Wacquant, 2012 Wacquant, L. (2012), The Punitive Regulation of Poverty in the Neoliberal Age, Criminal Justice Matters, 89(1), pp. 38–40.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). However that may be, Currie argues the expensive experiment in substituting imprisonment for social investment is not working. Fortunately, there may be alternatives.