The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders. By Vanessa Barker (Oxford University Press, 2009, 22.50)

Abstract

While it is well known that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world—one in every 100 adults in the United States is currently imprisoned—less well rehearsed is the fact that there are huge differences in prison population rates across the nation. Some states incarcerate 700 or more inmates per 100,000 population (with Louisiana heading the table, at over 800), while others—Maine and Minnesota—have the lowest rates, at 159 and 181, respectively. And, as is now well established, imprisonment rates and severity of punishment move independently from crime rates and trends (Tonry 2004). Tennessee, for example, ranks second in violent crime rates but twenty-second in imprisonment rates. The reasons for these disparities are the starting point for Vanessa Barker's book, The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders, which seeks to add a more nuanced understanding to the existing literature, which, on the whole, generalizes patterns and trends of imprisonment in the United States. But, as the subtitle suggests, this volume is about much more than attempting to explain variances in criminal justice policy across the United States. Informed by political sociology and particularly by the work of Robert Putnam, her claim is that the character and intensity of penal regimes are deeply rooted in the specific structure of the democratic process. For example, in political contexts with a high degree of civic engagement and social capital, we might expect to see more restorative justice policies and a less punitive approach to penality. Conversely, in political contexts with a low commitment to social reciprocity and relatively high degree of social polarization, it would be unsurprising to find a more retributive approach to punishment.