NCJ Number
150487
Date Published
1994
Length
199 pages
Annotation
The authors argue against the excessive use of prisons as the answer to crime problems in the United States and suggest that the current approach to sentencing and imprisonment needs critical review.
Abstract
The book relies on imprisonment rates, official crime statistics, and studies of criminal justice reform and on an ethnographic study of male prisoners. Going inside prisons, the authors examine the types of people in prison and look at the social effects of imprisonment on inmates. They note that the imprisonment rate in the United States is higher than any other country in the world and contend that inmates leave prisons in socially crippled and profoundly alienated conditions. In addition, the authors believe that prison overcrowding will be significantly reduced by substantially shortening prison terms and that public safety will not be sacrificed as a result. The correctional industrial complex is discussed, and consideration is given to imprisonment costs, public misperceptions about who goes to prison, national prison admission trends, crime patterns, habitual offenders, prison types, parole, crime reduction, and social costs of imprisonment. Notes, tables, and figures