Ending mass incarceration : why it persists and how to achieve meaningful reform / Katherine Beckett.

"Critics on both the left and the right increasingly use the term "mass incarceration" to call attention to the unprecedented scale of the U.S. criminal legal system - and the havoc it wreaks. This book shows that the criminal legal response to law-breaking has continued to intensify even as legislators increasingly embrace criminal justice reform. It also identifies three dynamics that help explain why mass incarceration persists despite growing recognition of its many failures, plummeting crime rates, and widespread efforts on the part of state legislators and others to reduce prison populations. These incarcerative forces include: the political and cultural dynamics surrounding the issue of violence, which have thus far prevented reconsideration of the wisdom and efficacy of long and life sentences; 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. 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 changes include the end of excessive sentencing and the enactment of a 20-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"-- Provided by publisher