Ending Mass Incarceration

Why it Persists and How to Achieve Meaningful Reform

Katherine Beckett

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Explains why mass incarceration persists despite widespread consensus that it is a failed public safety strategy
Identifies three broad policy changes that would limit the power of the criminal legal system
Recommends ambitious but doable solutions for pressing social problems
Engages with questions raised by by Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, and other recent events, including the true meaning of public safety
Provides nuanced empirical analysis in an accessible way

Ending Mass Incarceration

Why it Persists and How to Achieve Meaningful Reform

Katherine Beckett

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Description

Why mass incarceration endures in the face of reforms, and how to truly change America's vast criminal justice system

Critics on both the left and the right increasingly use the term "mass incarceration" to call attention to the unprecedented scale and inequities of the U.S. criminal legal system, and the havoc it wreaks. But even as lawmakers begin to embrace criminal justice reform, the criminal legal response to crime is harsher than ever.
In this book, Katherine Beckett explains how and why mass incarceration persists despite growing recognition of its many failures, plummeting crime rates, and widespread efforts by state legislators and others to reduce prison populations. Beckett identifies three primary forces sustaining incarceration rates in this country: political dynamics around violence, resistance to criminal legal system reform in suburban and rural counties, and the failure of popular drug policy reforms to reduce the reach of the criminal legal system. Most reform efforts to date have limited themselves in ways that are politically palatable but do little to curb key drivers of mass incarceration.

Beckett then turns to the question of how we can meaningfully decrease the size of the criminal justice system when so many reforms have failed. Drawing on extensive research, she argues for political and policy shifts that would significantly reduce the scale of punishment while also addressing the underlying social problems to which those extreme penalties are a misguided response. We need to end excessive sentencing and tackle the myth of monstrosity that fuels these inhumane sentences. We need to expand restorative justice principles that offer alternative ways of promoting accountability and healing. We need to expand harm-reduction and community-based responses for less serious crimes such as drug law violations. And in a broader sense, we need to reimagine our view of public safety and understand that locking up millions of our fellow citizens does not make us safer.

Rather than focusing on one key change as a miracle cure for our criminal justice system, Ending Mass Incarceration provides a cogent analysis of the dynamics working to sustain mass incarceration, the reforms that have been attempted to date, and the reforms we need to bring about truly transformative change.

Ending Mass Incarceration

Why it Persists and How to Achieve Meaningful Reform

Katherine Beckett

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Politics of Violence and the Myth of Monstrosity
Chapter 2: The Place of Punishment
Chapter 3: The Limits of Drug Policy Reform
Chapter 4: End Excessive Sentencing
Chapter 5: Violence and Victims
Chapter 6: Toward Transformative Drug Policy Reform
Chapter 7: Reimagining Public Safety

Bibliography
Index

Ending Mass Incarceration

Why it Persists and How to Achieve Meaningful Reform

Katherine Beckett

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Author Information

Katherine Beckett is Chair and Professor in the Department of Law, Societies, and Justice and S. Frank Miyamoto Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. She is also a faculty associate and steering committee member of the University of Washington's Center for Human Rights. Her research analyzes the causes and consequences of changes in criminal law and punishment in the United States, with a particular focus on the role of race. She is the author of Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics and co-author of Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America and The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America. In 2019 she received the Dorsen Presidential Prize for lifetime contributions to research on civil liberties and civil rights from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ending Mass Incarceration

Why it Persists and How to Achieve Meaningful Reform

Katherine Beckett

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Reviews and Awards

"This is the right book at the right time by the right author. Katherine Beckett has a keen understanding of the dynamics of criminal justice reform - both its strengths and weaknesses - as well as a sharp sense of what is necessary to correct misguided approaches in order to truly challenge mass incarceration. While policymakers and advocacy organizations both on the left and the right are congratulating themselves for the changing political environment on mass incarceration, Beckett carefully identifies the weaknesses and limitations of current reforms. Her analysis is very much on target." -- Marc Mauer, Senior Advisor to The Sentencing Project and co-author of The Meaning of Life: The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences

"Ending Mass Incarceration makes a timely and important contribution to research and policy debate about the the future of criminal justice policy in America. Katherine Beckett grounds current debates firmly in research helping us to understand how we can expand our possibilities and reverse the scourge of mass incarceration." -- Bruce Western, Chair, Department of Sociology, Columbia University

"This book is simply terrific! Professor Beckett has written a deeply informed, realistic yet hopeful, and erudite yet accessible book. Its publication could not be more timely as the nation struggles with whether genuine criminal justice system reform is possible, what steps need to be taken to bring it about, and what meaningful change would really look like. Beckett makes invaluable contributions to all of these overarching questions." -- Craig Haney, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz