The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America

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Cambridge University Press, Jun 19, 2006 - Political Science
The United States has built a carceral state that is unprecedented among Western countries and in US history. Nearly one in 50 people, excluding children and the elderly, is incarcerated today, a rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. What are some of the main political forces that explain this unprecedented reliance on mass imprisonment? Throughout American history, crime and punishment have been central features of American political development. This 2006 book examines the development of four key movements that mediated the construction of the carceral state in important ways: the victims' movement, the women's movement, the prisoners' rights movement, and opponents of the death penalty. This book argues that punitive penal policies were forged by particular social movements and interest groups within the constraints of larger institutional structures and historical developments that distinguish the United States from other Western countries.
 

Contents

Section 1
5
Section 2
8
Section 3
13
Section 4
18
Section 5
28
Section 6
41
Section 7
70
Section 8
77
Section 16
139
Section 17
140
Section 18
165
Section 19
167
Section 20
174
Section 21
184
Section 22
197
Section 23
201

Section 9
91
Section 10
98
Section 11
101
Section 12
115
Section 13
121
Section 14
133
Section 15
137
Section 24
216
Section 25
218
Section 26
230
Section 27
236
Section 28
240
Section 29
252
Section 30
260

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About the author (2006)

Marie Gottschalk is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a PhD in political science from Yale University and an MPA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She is the author of The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business, and the Politics of Health Care in the United States (Cornell University Press, 2000). She is a a former associate editor of World Policy Journal and a former associate director of the World Policy Institute in New York City.

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