Description
In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far –reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of "get tough on crime" attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and '90s, a range of strategies, from "three strikes" and "a war on drugs," to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrongdoers, but on their families and the communities they come from. This book looks at the consequences of these policies twenty years later.
Read More
Per capita, there are more Americans in jail than in any other country in the world that is not experiencing civil war. That this situation has major social and economic consequences for the imprisoned and their families should be obvious, but it also has major intended and unintended (or "collateral") consequences for the society as a whole. Mauer (assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform organization) and Chesney-Lind (women's studies, U. of Hawaii) present 16 contributions exploring the entire range of these consequences, from the impact of imprisonment on the individual's life history to the impact of American mass imprisonment on the international stage. The essays approach the topic from an array of ideological and theoretical viewpoints, but all are extremely critical of the mass imprisonment regime. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Read Less