Policymakers and criminal justice officials from coast to coast are starting to realize that America’s prison colossus costs too much, delivers too few benefits, and inflicts unacceptable collateral damage. In order to chart a better way forward, however, we first need to figure out how we landed in the muck in the first place. Here scholars disagree widely. In this essay I just finished for Boston Review, I examine competing explanations for what historians call “the punitive turn.” I also develop my own argument that mass imprisonment took shape largely as an inchoate political reaction against the victories of the civil rights movement. The article appears in a special issue that also includes thoughtful, provocative essays by Bruce Western, Mary F. Katzenstein, and Mary L. Shanley.
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