Mass Incarceration On Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America

Description

For nearly forty years the United States has been gripped by policies that have placed more than 2.5 million Americans in jails and prisons designed to hold a fraction of that number of inmates. Our prisons are not only vast and overcrowded, they are degrading--relying on racist gangs, lockdowns, and Supermax-style segregation units to maintain a to maintain a tenuous order.

Jonathan Simon is the Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. His book Governing Through Crime won the American Sociology Association's 2008 Sociology of Law Distinguished Book Award. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Finalist for the Media for a Just Society Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency "Simon's arguments are unique...it's hard not to agree with Simon that the policies of mass incarceration...are one of the greatest human rights abuses in this century." -Los Angeles Review of Books "An impassioned plea for prison reform grounded in human dignity...a sound, sobering report." -Kirkus "An eloquent critique of the American prison system...Simon's accessible and powerful book deserves widespread attention." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Yet another sign of the new optimism about criminal justice reform." -David Cole, New York Review of Books "Remarkable...In mapping a way forward, Simon introduces innovative legal devices to ensure that mass incarceration joins the nation's past aberrations from our democracy." -New York Law Journal "Simon fits the numbers into a frame that renders them disturbingly intelligible." -Inside Higher Ed "Anyone who believes that the United States does not torture prisoners in domestic lock-up need only read Jonathan Simon's book...to be disabused of this delusion." -Truthout "Both a useful guide to Plata and an effective polemic against the United States' excessive reliance on prisons." -Reason "A masterful job of assessing the qualitative shift in the court's analysis on human rights concerns as they apply to our notorious prison system, the book points the way to a legal strategy premised on human dignity as a means of challenging mass incarceration." -Marc Mauer, executive director, The Sentencing Project, and author of Race to Incarcerate "A powerful critique of California's use of mass incarceration combined with an inspiring vision of a hopeful future created by landmark court decisions." -Jules Lobel, president, Center for Constitutional Rights "Highly readable, stunning stuff. California is at the epicenter of a new American debate about prison policy and Simon's remarkable book places the state's travails in national and historical context. I recommend it to anyone interested in the problem of prisons in America." -Todd Clear, author of The Punishment Imperative "[Jonathan Simon is] one of the outstanding criminologists of his generation." -Nikolas Rose, London School of Economics