NCJ Number
213341
Date Published
2004
Length
209 pages
Annotation
This book documents trends in imprisonment in the countries of Europe and the United States and offers an explanation of the dramatic increase in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by a challenge to address the dangers of this trend.
Abstract
The increasing proportion of people subject to the crime control industry, particularly imprisonment, in Western-type societies has paralleled the development of two major problems. One problem is that wealth is unequally distributed. The second problem, which is related to the first, is that access to well-paid work is also unequally distributed. Both problems hold the potential for unrest. Instead of attempting to deal with these problems through constructive economic and social reforms that will provide a more equal distribution of wealth, countries have instead left the trend in inequalities undisturbed while calling on the crime control industry to deal with the consequences. The desire for security, stability, and predictability among the more affluent elements of society has fueled the willingness of politicians and policymakers to make huge investments in the crime control industry, particularly its most costly feature, i.e., prisons and jails. The book shows how trends in the use of imprisonment have risen and fallen over time, and it traces this to underlying societal values as to what is right and fair in the treatment of other human beings. It is finally such values that will determine the limits societies will choose to impose on the crime control industry. Thoughts, values, and ethics, not the drive for profit, must ultimately determine the limits of control. This book is about the forces driving the prison industry, and it is also about the counterforces of morality. Extensive tables and figures and 130 references