Incarceration nation : how the United States became the most punitive democracy in the world / Peter K. Enns.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Enns, Peter (Peter K.), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imprisonment--United States--History.

Imprisonment.

Criminal justice, Administration of--United States--History.

Criminal justice, Administration of.

Corrections--United States--History.

Corrections.

United States--Politics and government.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 192 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The rise of mass incarceration in the United States is one of the most critical outcomes of the last half-century. Incarceration Nation offers the most compelling explanation of this outcome to date. This book combines in-depth analysis of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon's presidential campaigns with sixty years of data analysis. The result is a sophisticated and highly accessible picture of the rise of mass incarceration. In contrast to conventional wisdom, Peter K. Enns shows that during the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, politicians responded to an increasingly punitive public by pushing policy in a more punitive direction. The book also argues that media coverage of rising crime rates helped fuel the public's punitiveness. Equally as important, a decline in public punitiveness in recent years offers a critical window into understanding current bipartisan calls for criminal justice reform.

Contents:

Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright information; Dedication; Table of contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction ; 1.1 The high costs of mass incarceration; 1.2 Why did the United States become the world's incarceration leader?; 1.2.1 The importance of public opinion; 1.3 Plan of this book; 2 A forgiving or a punitive public?; 2.1 Past measures of criminal justice attitudes; 2.2 The importance of measuring opinion change; 2.3 How do political actors think about public opinion?; 2.4 Measuring the public's punitiveness; 2.5 Public opinion and american exceptionalism

2.5.1 A brief consideration of cross-national data2.5.2 The political landscape in the United States; 2.6 Conclusion; A-2 Appendices to Chapter 2: question wording; A-2.1 Questions used in Figures 2.2 and 2.3; A-2.2 Questions used in footnote 14; A-2.3 Questions used in Table 2.1; A-2.4 Questions used in Figures 2.7 and 2.8; 3 Who led whom?; 3.1 Political and public concern for crime; 3.2 Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign; 3.3 Johnson's shift on crime; 3.4 Opinion polls and Nixon's presidential campaigns; 3.5 Mass and elite opinion in the 1970s and 1980s; 3.6 Conclusion

A-3 Appendices to Chapter 3A-3.1 Pro-Goldwater comments ; A-3.2 ANES questions (Figure 3.2); A-3.3 Trust and confidence in Goldwater and Johnson questions (Figure 3.3); A-3.4 Johnson's approval ratings ; 4 Explaining the public's punitiveness ; 4.1 Crime rates over time; 4.1.1 Implications of similar crime trajectories; 4.2 Measuring news about crime; 4.2.1 The rise of crime and news coverage of crime; 4.3 Crime reporting and the public's punitiveness; 4.4 The rise of crime dramas on TV; 4.5 Crime, news, and the development of a law and order society from 1950 to 2010; 4.6 Conclusion

A-4 Appendix to Chapter 4A-4.1 Robustness of the Granger causality analysis ; 5 Democracy at work? Public opinion and mass incarceration; 5.1 The importance of analyzing changes in the incarceration rate; 5.2 The public's punitiveness and changes in the incarceration rate; 5.2.1 Control variables; 5.2.2 Time series analysis; 5.3 Conclusion; A-5 Appendices to Chapter 5 ; A-5.1 Drug mortality data coding ; A-5.2 Additional robustness checks; 6 Punitive politics in the states ; 6.1 State incarceration rates; 6.2 Measuring state punitiveness

6.3 What explains changes in state incarceration rates?6.3.1 Control variables; 6.3.2 Incarceration rate results; 6.4 A second test: state expenditures on corrections; 6.4.1 Corrections expenditure results; 6.5 Conclusion; A-6 Appendices to Chapter 6 ; A-6.1 Incarceration rate analysis: additional robustness checks ; A-6.2 Corrections expenditures analysis: additional robustness checks; 7 Conclusion; 7.1 The importance of studying change; 7.2 What might have been; 7.3 The human toll of mass incarceration; 7.4 Public opinion as a unifying framework; 7.5 The future of the US prison system

References

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 08 Mar 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-55207-1

1-316-55375-2

1-316-55403-1

1-316-55459-7

1-316-55431-7

1-316-55571-2

1-316-47102-0