Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics

by Marie Gottschalk, Marie Gottschalk (Preface by)

Overview

A major reappraisal of crime and punishment in America

The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders, yet reforms to reduce the numbers of those incarcerated have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, an ever-widening carceral state has sprouted in the shadows, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship—posing a formidable political and social challenge. In Caught, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state remains so tenacious in the United States. She analyzes the shortcomings of the two dominant penal reform strategies—one focused on addressing racial disparities, the other on seeking bipartisan, race-neutral solutions centered on reentry, justice reinvestment, and reducing recidivism.

With a new preface evaluating the effectiveness of recent proposals to reform mass incarceration, Caught offers a bracing appraisal of the politics of penal reform.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691170831
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	02/16/2016
Pages:	504
Sales rank:	702,160
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Marie Gottschalk is professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. A former journalist and editor, she was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration. She is the author of, among other works, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America and The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business, and the Politics of Health Care in the United States.

Table of Contents

List of Figures xi

List of Abbreviations xiii

Preface to the Paperback Edition xv

Chapter 1 Introduction

The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics 1

Part I The Political Economy of Penal Reform 23

Chapter 2 Show Me the Money, The Great Recession and the Great Confinement 25

Chapter 3 Squaring the Political Circle, The New Political Economy of the Carceral State 48

Chapter 4 What Second Chance?, Reentry and Penal Reform 79

Chapter 5 Caught Again, Justice Reinvestment and Recidivism 98

Part II The Politics of Race and Penal Reform 117

Chapter 6 Is Mass Incarceration the "New Jim Crow"? Racial Disparities and the Carceral State 119

Chapter 7 What’s Race Got to Do with It?, Bolstering and Challenging the Carceral State 139

Part III The Metastasizing Carceral State 163

Chapter 8 Split Verdict, The Non, Non, Nons and the "Worst of the Worst" 165

Chapter 9 The New Untouchables, The War on Sex Offenders 196

Chapter 10 Catch and Keep, The Criminalization of Immigrants 215

Chapter 11 The Prison beyond the Prison, The Carceral State and Growing Political and Economic Inequalities in the United States 241

Chapter 12 Bring It On, The Future of Penal Reform, the Carceral State, and American Politics 258

Acknowledgments 283

Notes 285

Select Bibliography 411

Index 439

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This is the most comprehensive, synthetic, and compelling account of what is driving penal trends in America today. For contemporary scholars and activists, Caught is certain to become a common starting point for future debates about what direction policy reform and social activism should take."—Jonathan Simon, author of Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear

"[A]cademic but accessible, and it has an urgency to it. . . . A needed cry for justice."—Kirkus Reviews

"This is a brilliantly framed, intellectually courageous analysis of a pivotal and problematic period in American criminal justice history. Gottschalk offers unique and penetrating insights into the complex forces that led to the creation of our nation's massive carceral state. Her research is meticulous, the scope of her vision is sweeping, and her criticism is unflinching. Absolutely essential reading for understanding this profound transformation of American society."—Craig W. Haney, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Gottschalk's book is a tour de force. Caught constitutes a searing critique of current incarceration policies and prevailing approaches to prison reform. It is brilliantly argued, breathtakingly capacious in its informational reach, and intellectually bold. A stunning achievement."—Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Cornell University

"In this pathbreaking and meticulous book, Gottschalk traces the rapid development of highly targeted mass imprisonment since the early 1970s. Drawing links between the prison buildup and a range of policies that have increased state control and surveillance beyond the prison, Caught sheds new light on the relationship between criminal justice and the ideological shape, material conditions, and institutional structure of the broader political economy."—Nicola Lacey, London School of Economics

"Caught makes clear that we have totally underestimated just how devastating an impact today's massive carceral state has had on our nation, and shines much-needed light on why it has been so immune to attempts at reform. Most importantly, this book offers vital new perspective on what it actually will take to unmake this criminal justice crisis."—Heather Ann Thompson, University of Michigan

Editorial Reviews

"[A] powerful book."

Choice

"Admirably bold. . . . [S]weeping and magisterial."

Perspectives on Politics

"Gottschalk convincingly shows that the American penal system has come to embody a very un-American idea: that there are lives that are not worth caring about and people beyond reforming."

The Christian Century

"Winner of the 2016 Michael Harrington Book Award, New Political Science Section of the American Political Science Association"

Winner of the 2018 Michael J. Hindelang Award, American Society of Criminology

From the Publisher

2014-10-22
Of "punitive sentiments and punitive policies"—a searching study of the explosion of American prisons, seemingly one of the nation's only growth industry.The notion of the "carceral state" has been current for half a century, thanks in good part to Michel Foucault, but only recently have the statistics caught up to the theory. Gottschalk (Political Science/Univ. of Pennsylvania; The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America, 2006, etc.) describes a kind of American gulag that has "sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment and has been extending its reach far beyond the prison gate." On one hand are three-strikes laws and politicians enriching themselves at the trough of private prisons; on the other hand are powerful corrections-workers unions that resist reforms. All demand to be fed, and they are fed with prisoners in a rigged system that no one wants to fix. Gottschalk's densely documented study—nearly a third of the book is notes and sources—is academic but accessible, and it has an urgency to it. As she observes, much reformist political energy has gone into the three Rs of "recidivism, reentry, and justice reinvestment" and entirely too little into investigating the social causes of crime, among them a vast racial imbalance brought on by such things as "the push to build up human capital rather than address the disappearance of good jobs." Meanwhile, the carceral state grows at immense cost, both social and financial, unchecked legislatively or even at the level of the Supreme Court, which, Gottschalk argues, seems interested only in capital-level crimes while failing to make any contributions to determining "proportionality" in the punishment of crime. Even as the carceral state grows, Gottschalk concludes, crime persists—less so in affluent communities, but ragingly in minority areas, A needed cry for justice, though perhaps unlikely to be heeded in this noisy second Gilded Age.

Kirkus Reviews