Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration-and How to Achieve Real Reform

by John Pfaff

Overview

A groundbreaking reassessment of the American prison system, challenging the widely accepted explanations for our exploding incarceration rates

In Locked In, John Pfaff argues that the factors most commonly cited to explain mass incarceration — the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on private prisons — tell us much less than we think. Instead, Pfaff urges us to look at other factors, especially a major shift in prosecutor behavior that occurred in the mid-1990s, when prosecutors began bringing felony charges against arrestees about twice as often as they had before.

An authoritative, clear-eyed account of a national catastrophe, Locked In is "a must-read for anyone who dreams of an America that is not the world's most imprisoned nation" (Chris Hayes, author of A Colony in a Nation). It transforms our understanding of what ails the American system of punishment and ultimately forces us to reconsider how we can build a more equitable and humane society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465096916
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	712,011
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

John F. Pfaff is a Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. His work on mass incarceration, prosecutors, and criminal justice reform has been covered in the Economist, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, Slate, and Vox, among many others. He has a JD and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction American Exceptionalism 1

Part I The Standard Story

Chapter 1 The War on Drugs 21

Chapter 2 A Brief History of Time (Served) 51

Chapter 3 Private Prisons, Public Spending 79

Chapter 4 Costs of the Standard Story 105

Part II A New Narrative

Chapter 5 The Man Behind the Curtain 127

Chapter 6 The Broken Politics of Punishment 161

Chapter 7 The Third Rail: Violent Offenses 185

Chapter 8 Quo Vadis? 203

Conclusion 233

Acknowledgments 237

Notes 239

Index 297

Editorial Reviews

"Pfaff, let there be no doubt, is a reformer...Nonetheless, he believes that the standard story-popularized in particular by Michelle Alexander, in her influential book, The New Jim Crow-is false. We are desperately in need of reform, he insists, but we must reform the right things, and address the true problem."—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

"In the extremely important book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, John F. Pfaff analyzes why America incarcerates more people than ever even as crime rates continue to fall... [he] also makes a compelling case that incarceration disrupts the lives of the incarcerated and their families long after they have served their time." —Wall Street Journal

"With rigor and specificity, John Pfaff sifts through the data to mount a convincing case about the causes of mass incarceration and the levers by which we can undo it. A must-read for anyone who dreams of an America that is not the world's most imprisoned nation." —Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes and author of A Colony in a Nation

"A valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion about justice reform... Packed with charts and figures, it's candy to the numbers-loving brain, but even those who weary of statistics are sure to find some interesting tidbits... Peppered throughout are fascinating details about our justice system that you probably won't find elsewhere... Maybe it's time to stop arguing about who broke America. Locked In gives us some ideas for how we might fix it."—National Review

"An excellent overview of where America stands in regard to its prisons, and Pfaff's proposed reforms deserve serious consideration across the political spectrum." —American Conservative

"Provocative and packed with data, Locked In will change how you think about what's wrong with the criminal justice system and how to fix it. A book that will be instantly integral to solving one of the country's most important challenges."
—Emily Bazelon, Senior Research Scholar in Law, Yale University, and author of Sticks and Stones

"A refreshing look at the causes of mass incarceration, and is a must-read for anyone involved in the criminal justice reform movement. You may not agree with everything that Pfaff argues, but you will finish the book with a better understanding of the complexity of the problem and the need for solutions." —New York Journal of Books

"In Locked In, Pfaff plays a Socrates of criminal justice reform, interrogating all the main tenets of the Standard Story and eviscerating them with scores of data."—Pacific Standard

"Timely and authoritative, Pfaff's discussion of mass incarceration provides a valuable and accessible addition to the prison reform narrative and an excellent analysis of the U.S. criminal justice system."
—Library Journal

"[Pfaff] makes a powerful case that the war on drugs has had very little effect on incarceration rates overall, or racial disparities in prison more specifically."—New York Review of Books

"To those asking why the United States imprisons so many of its people, the answers and hints of possible reform are here."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"A succinct, powerful explanation of why much of what we think about the incarceration boom is probably wrong."—Bloomberg View

"Pfaff offers a trove of evidence that [the 'standard story' of mass incarceration] is by and large wrong or, at the very least, misses much of the real story. —Vox

"Required reading for students, citizens, activists and policy reformers interested in excavating how our system of hyper-incarceration was constructed incrementally over decades."—America Magazine

"A thorough and demanding examination of a problem that has no easy solutions and a challenge to policymakers to discard prior notions about the nature of the problem and the needed reforms."—Kirkus Reviews

"In Locked In, John Pfaff delivers a brilliant lesson in myth-busting that anyone interested in reform of our criminal justice system must heed."—Professor Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center

"Locked In is a game changer for those who care about the crisis of mass incarceration.... If you want to change how we imprison people, you have to read this book!"—Phillip Atiba Goff, President of the Center for Policing Equity and Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice

From the Publisher

01/01/2017
There has been much discussion over past years about the issue of mass incarceration and prison reform in the United States. Pfaff (law, Fordham Law Sch.) adds his voice by illuminating the underlying causes of the high incarceration rates and suggesting ideas for practical, long-lasting reform. Backing up his claims with statistics and well-researched facts, Pfaff challenges several commonly cited causes of high incarceration rates and growth (e.g., the war on drugs) and suggests other factors for this issue such as unchecked prosecutorial power. There are also discussions of topics such as public perception and "tough-on-crime" laws (for example, increasingly punitive public opinion); social, economical, and political challenges like uneven electoral representation of constituents; reform opportunities such as reducing time served by utilizing sentencing guidelines; and more. VERDICT Timely and authoritative, Pfaff's discussion of mass incarceration provides a valuable and accessible addition to the prison reform narrative and an excellent analysis of the U.S. criminal justice system. Recommended for scholars and others interested in criminal justice and sociology.—Jennifer Harris, Southern New Hampshire Univ. Lib., Manchester

Library Journal

2016-11-15
Why the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and what can be done to address the problem.Pfaff (Fordham Law School; Sentencing Law and Policy, 2015) challenges the commonly held belief that American prisons are filled with low-level drug offenders as a result of the war on drugs. What is not in dispute is that the U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population but nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. With a formidable array of statistics, cited in the dense text and often also shown in chart and tabular form, the author examines crimes rates and incarceration rates, giving a useful picture of the prison population over time. Surprisingly, a very small percentage of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent drug offenses, while more than half are in for violent crimes. From his extensive research, Pfaff asserts that a significant cause of the rise in prison growth are rising admissions, and he points to the increasing rate at which prosecutors filed felony charges against arrestees during years when both crime rates and arrests fell. He proposes several approaches to regulating tough, aggressive prosecutors, whom he calls the engines driving mass incarceration, among them adequately funding public defenders, establishing charging and plea bargaining guidelines, appointing rather than electing prosecutors, and establishing sentencing commissions. If there is a take-home message from Pfaff's book, it is that the problem of mass incarceration is massive and complicated, that it is a state rather than federal problem, that solutions must come from state and county governments, and that they involve changing public attitudes about balancing the costs of crime and the costs of punishment. A thorough and demanding examination of a problem that has no easy solutions and a challenge to policymakers to discard prior notions about the nature of the problem and the needed reforms.

Kirkus Reviews