The United States has not always been the world's leading jailer, the only affluent democracy to make “incapacitation” its criminal justice system's goal. Once upon a time, it fashioned itself as the very model of what Michel Foucault called “the disciplinary society.” That is, it took an enlightened approach to punishment, progressively tethering it to rehabilitative ideals. Today, it is a carceral state, plain and simple. It posts the highest incarceration rate in the world — as well as the highest violent crime rate among high-income countries.
Politicians, reporters, and activists from across the political spectrum have analyzed the ongoing crisis of mass incarceration. Their accounts sometimes depict our current plight as an expression of puritanism, as an extension of slavery or Jim Crow, or as an exigency of capitalism. But these approaches fail to address the question that ought to be foremost in front of us: what was the nature of the punitive turn that pushed the US off the path of reform and turned its correctional system into a rogue institution?
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