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Carregando... The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in Americade Todd R. Clear
   Nenhum(a) Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.  KelMunger | Mar 10, 2014 |  sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
Over the last 40 years, the US penal system has grown at an unprecedented ratefive times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. In The Punishment Imperative, eminent criminologists Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost argue that Americas move to mass incarceration from the 1960s to the early 2000s was more than just a response to crime or a collection of policies adopted in isolation; it was a grand social experiment. Tracing a wide array of trends related to the criminal justice system, this book charts the rise of penal severity in America and speculates that a variety of forcesfiscal, political, and evidentiaryhave finally come together to bring this great social experiment to an end. The authors stress that while the doubling of the crime rate in the late 1960s represented one of the most pressing social problems at the time, it was instead the way crime posed a political problemand thereby offered a political opportunitythat became the basis for the great rise in punishment. Clear and Frost contend that the publics growing realization that the severe policies themselves, not growing crime rates, were the main cause of increased incarceration eventually led to a surge of interest in taking a more rehabilitative, pragmatic, and cooperative approach to dealing with criminal offenders that still continues to this day. Part historical study, part forward-looking policy analysis, The Punishment Imperative is a compelling study of a generation of crime and punishment in America. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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 Google Books — Carregando...GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)365.973Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Penal & related institutions History, geographic treatment, biography North America United StatesClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia: (4)
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The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America by Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost (NYU Press, $30).
Todd R. Clear and Natash A. Frost are both academics who specialize in criminal justice issues. Using four decades of research—dating back to the birth of this most recent incarnation of our “law-and-order, punish the offenders” approach to criminal justice in the U.S.—they show how badly the plan to simply “lock ‘em up” has failed and point a clear way forward that involves rehabilitation and restoration.
It’s more than a timely assessment; dismantling our system of mass incarceration in favor of evidence-based approaches to criminal justice may be the only way that we can prevent crime, rehabilitate criminals, and avoid going bankrupt.
Clear and Frost provide an excellent overview of the current system, with its mandatory sentencing, “three-strikes” terms, and the political focus on placating the American instinct for vengeance as express in punishment. The current state of the prison systems (it’s not one system, obviously, but some political responses to crime—like the aforementioned “three strikes” and mandatory sentencing—do seem to move quickly from state to state) is detailed, and followed with some clear-cut proposals that would lead to more humane—and sane—sentencing and incarceration policies, especially for non-violent offenders.
The Punishment Imperative is an excellent historical overview of how the prison systems got to this point—especially in the way that it makes clear that the problem is not one of criminal justice, but of politics—and, particularly if combined with Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, will be an excellent first step toward a public conversation about prison reform.
(Published on 2/2/2014 on Lit/Rant: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/75358214571/break-the-incarceration-habit-the-pun... (