The Pains of Mass Imprisonment

by Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Jamie Longazel

Overview

This engaging book presents a critical approach to understanding prison conditions in the United States in the era of mass incarceration. Fleury-Steiner and Longazel do this by weaving together empirical research on prisons with stories that rely on the voices and lived experiences of people who are locked up. This is an ideal book for courses in corrections, social problems, criminology, and prisoner re-entry. The new edition of The Pains of Mass Imprisonment dramatically expands and revises the previous edition to include more empirical data, significant engagement with current debates and scholarship, and extended pedagogical and learning materials.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032422008
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/30/2025
Series:	Framing 21st Century Social Issues
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Benjamin Fleury-Steiner is Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. For more than two decades, he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on inequality, mass imprisonment, and the death penalty. Fleury-Steiner is the author of more than 30 scholarly journal and law review articles and numerous books, including Jurors’ Stories of Death: How America's Death Penalty Invests in Inequality; Dying Inside: The HIV/AIDS Ward at Limestone Prison; and The Elgar Companion to Capital Punishment and Society (co-edited with Austin Sarat).

Jamie Longazel is Associate Professor of Law and Society at John Jay College and is on the International Migration Studies faculty at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of Undocumented Fears: Immigration and the Politics of Divide and Conquer in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and co-editor (with Miranda Cady Hallett) of Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Containment
/2. Exploitation (with Candice Duncan, Meagan Heatherton, Jamella Richmond, and Emily Teresa Rodriguez)
/3. Coercion (with Mackenzie Niness)
/4. Isolation
/5. Brutality
/6. The Pains of Migrant Imprisonment

Editorial Reviews

"The Pains of Mass Imprisonment is an incredibly important text for anyone who is interested in understanding more about incarceration and its consequences. This second edition offers timely examples that have emerged over the last decade (e.g., COVID-19), updated research, and a new chapter on migrant detention. The latter is an issue that has perhaps never been more relevant given the current political climate and promises for unprecedented “mass deportations” from the Trump administration as soon as January, 2025. 'Stories from the Inside' are another welcome addition. These accounts of lived experiences are not only compelling, they highlight the tragic lack of humanity that those who experience incarceration often endure and why this must change."

Meghan A. Novisky, PhD, Senior Research Associate, University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute

“This is a deceivingly compact book that is all substance; the authors leave the moral and policy implications for readers to wrestle with after equipping them with the necessary data, examples, and historical and legal context. Seamlessly blending key concepts from criminology with true stories that epitomize the systemic ‘pains’ that incarcerated people endure in this era of mass incarceration, this is an ideal text for students, advocates, or anyone looking to learn more about these problems – yet there is enough range and detail here to engage experts as well.”

Wendy Sawyer, Research Director at the Prison Policy Initiative

From the Publisher