Introduction xvii prisons (Stephan 2008). There are an additional 3,200 local and county jails. In fact, there are more prisons and jails in the United States than there are colleges (Ingraham 2015). There is a great deal of variation across prisons, including differences in security levels, financial resources, educational programming, health care opportunities, and punishment options. Equally important, there is variation within prisons, with some inmates facing harsher conditions than others, even within the same facility. “Doing time” is not a uniform experience, even for inmates in the same prison (Lerman 2014). Just as everyone is not equally likely to be placed in prison, inmates vary in their likelihood of being punished while incarcerated. This introduction focuses on a profile of American prisons and prisoners. Far from being the “super predators” maligned by politicians of both major political parties, most prisoners are drawn from the weakest, most isolated, most disadvantaged areas of society. We take the vulnerable, punish them severely, and then blame them for any failures. After decades of blaming “criminals” and “super predators,” it is my hope that we can examine our own culpability. That examination must begin with better knowledge of the realities of modern American prisons. American Prisons For nearly six decades, criminal justice policy in the United States has undergone a dramatic transformation, reflecting a shift in the values and assumptions guiding the treatment of “crime” and “criminals.” The United States has shifted from a system focused on rehabilitation to a system focused on punishment, from a system that viewed crime as primarily society’s fail- ure to a system that views crime as an individual failure. This change has enjoyed bipartisan support from presidents such as Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton (Alexander 2010 Hinton 2016 Simon 2007 West- ern 2006). The placement of millions of vulnerable Americans behind bars, and their subsequent harsh treatment inside prison, is a direct consequence of this switch from rehabilitation to punishment. The most obvious manifestation of the switch to a more punitive model has been the historic increase in the imprisonment rate. The mainstream narrative has argued that the historic increase in incarceration is based on a corresponding increase in crime. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton all warned of increasing crime and the dangers of lawlessness (Alex- ander 2010 Hinton 2016 Simon 2007 Western 2006). Sometimes the dan- gers were posed by “rioters” and sometimes by the “crack epidemic,” but the drumbeat against crime was unrelenting. Unfortunately for the vulnerable, this narrative, rather than more objective information, has dominated crim- inal justice policy. Scholars will often reproduce graphs of both incarceration and crime rates. The graphs are somewhat well known, and the lines on the graphs do
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