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

The book that shows how a radical Supreme Court ruling on overcrowding in California prisons may mark the beginning of the end of mass incarceration in America In this “impassioned plea for human dignity” (Kirkus Reviews) Jonathan Simon—called “one of the outstanding criminologists of his generation” by Nikolas Rose of the London School of Economics—charts a surprising path to end mass incarceration in America. Using the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Plata on overcrowding in California prisons as his starting point, Simon suggests that incarcerating people on a “mass” scale simply cannot be accomplished in comportment with the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction......Page 14 1 Total Incapacitation......Page 30 2 The House of Fear......Page 60 3 Engines of Madness......Page 86 4 Torture on the Installment Plan......Page 100 5 Places of Extreme Peril......Page 122 6 Dignity Cascade......Page 146 7 The New Common Sense of High- Crime Societies......Page 168 Notes......Page 186 Index......Page 212