Abstract
Hardly any issue has recently found its way so frequently into the criminological literature than America’s incarceration boom. Why American Prisons Fail is an insightful text that details America’s path toward becoming the nation with the highest incarceration rates in the world. The book, however, does not end there. The authors also propose bipartisan reforms within the criminal justice system, which should aim at reducing the reliance on incarceration as a form of punishment for criminal offenders.
The authors of the book are Peyton Paxson, a criminal justice professor from Massachusetts, and George H. Watson, a former attorney from Texas, who served roughly 3 years in federal prison for participating in a mortgage fraud case. Given Watson’s firsthand experience, it soon becomes clear to the reader that the book is more than a descriptive account of the role of incarceration in the United States. The book provides readers with an insightful perspective on the current state of the country’s criminal justice system in general and the prison system in particular.
In Chapter 1, the authors address the causes of the American incarceration boom. By examining demographic, economic, and political factors, they argue that the politics of mass incarceration have been primarily the result of demographic changes in the form of the so-called baby boom, of political decisions reflected in the War on Drugs, and the decline of rehabilitation as an important justification for punishment in favor of incapacitation.
Chapter 2 details Watson’s journey through the Texas criminal justice system. He explains how he unknowingly became part of a mortgage fraud conspiracy and how his defense lawyer advised him to plead guilty to avoid more severe punishment than 3 years in federal prison. Through the account of his arrest, sentencing, preparation for prison, and time in and after confinement, Watson conveys to his readers how his prison sentence not only disrupted his own life but also damaged his family and community.
Following Watson’s story, Chapter 3 provides a college textbook-like overview of theories explaining criminal behavior and the justifications typically given for punishing criminal offenders in the United States. What differs from most other books listing theories of punishment, the authors emphasize in this chapter how rational choice theory underlies the most popular theories of criminal behavior and punishment in the United States. The freedom to choose for ourselves, which has become “deeply engrained in the American psyche” since the foundational years, informs most criminological and penal theories (p. 82).
Moving beyond the United States in Chapter 4, the authors introduce readers to selected correctional policies implemented in other Western democracies. These countries are Norway, Denmark, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Germany. While the authors do not go into much detail on how these countries’ criminal justice systems evolved out of their specific cultural, social, economic, and political contexts, they infer from their comparisons that prison sentences have primarily been used to find the best ways to reintegrate offenders back into society. This is quite different from the United States, where prison time serves as a major disruption, during which the alienation from family and community is common.
In the following two chapters, the authors discuss how the American political and economic system has sustained the incarceration boom. Chapter 5 discusses the growing power of the government in criminal justice. The authors criticize the “overcriminalization of American society” due to growing pressure from political lobbying groups, the media, and the public (p. 172). The authors lament that an increasing amount of criminal laws are passed hastily, while older laws tend to not be repealed, leading to overlapping laws and unmanageable complexity in criminal codes. They also criticize the plea bargaining process, which has put more power into the prosecutor’s hands at the cost of the defense. Chapter 6 then turns to the political economy of corrections. The authors address both the involvement of private companies in the management of prisons and their role as vendors in governmental institutions (e.g., in the telecommunications, video conferencing, and banking sectors).
In the final chapter (Chapter 7), the authors suggest reforms based on their observations in the United States and elsewhere. While acknowledging that America’s desire to punish is deeply rooted in cultural ideals about liberty and individualism, the authors are convinced that public officials across the political spectrum have come to realize that the current spending on the correctional system is fiscally not feasible in the long term.
Without doubt, Paxson’s and Watson’s reform proposals are important and necessary at a time when criminal justice reform is used as a buzzword across the American political spectrum. Their reform proposals are comprehensive and span from providing more access to cost-effective rehabilitation and education programs to substantial modifications of existing legislation. The authors further present particularly strong arguments for a reconsideration of the plea bargaining process and the removal of private businesses from corrections. A complete ideological shift from incapacitation to reintegration, which the authors would eventually hope for, seems however quite ambitious, given the unique American approach to criminal behavior and punishment. Although the authors highlight this unique approach on several occasions, they do not provide many details on the history of punishment in other Western democracies. A more detailed historical comparison with the United States might have allowed for a more thorough understanding of how deep-seated penal attitudes are derived from country-specific cultural factors.