Abstract
Many books have been written on the ongoing era of mass incarceration in the United States. While some discuss its causes, others expose its consequences for the criminal justice system and communities at large. The Punishment Imperative, first published in 2013, is a book that provides a thorough historical analysis of mass incarceration but also points to tighter community corrections and reintegration barriers that have characterized the punitive era. What most stands out about Clear and Frost’s book, however, is that they anticipate the end of the punitive era and that they make specific policy recommendations on how to deal with the legacy of America’s punitive apparatus.
Throughout the book, Clear and Frost are clear on the insight that mass incarceration has not been simply the product of higher crime rates in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, the authors argue that the phenomenon was a grand social experiment, which they define as the “adoption of a new, largely unproven strategy for a high-priority social problem based on a reformulated understanding of that problem” (p. 49). Facing rising crime rates, political leaders seized the opportunity of an increased fear of crime to implement new and innovative strategies to deal with the issue. They started experimenting with policies aimed at punishing more harshly. The authors refer to this as the Punishment Imperative, “a great, though poorly articulated, social experiment in expanded social control” (p. 3).
The book consists of seven chapters. In the first chapter, the authors not only outline the rise of the Punishment Imperative but also provide some evidence of its fall. They cite examples from several states, which have recently either closed prisons or passed new legislation with the goal of reducing their prison populations. Chapter 2 goes back in time to the era of prison population growth starting in the 1970s. The authors reference an impressive amount of statistical data that highlight regional differences in incarceration rates as well as the large impact mass incarceration has had on primarily urban African American neighborhoods. Despite its focus on the prison, the chapter also addresses the growth of the correctional system in general terms, an aspect of the work that particularly stands out. The authors list more frequent use of community supervision in the form of probation and parole, tougher intermediate sanctions, and the imposition of major hurdles to reintegration for former prisoners. Clear and Frost emphasize that all of this together, and not just mass incarceration alone, characterize the Punishment Imperative.
In Chapter 3, Clear and Frost outline the conceptual framework of their book. By understanding the punitive turn rooted in the 1970s as a “grand social experiment,” the authors compare this phenomenon to the New Deal of the 1930s and the War on Poverty of the 1960s. For all three social experiments, the authors argue, political leaders used the momentum of a major social problem, be it an economic downturn, poverty, or crime, and hastily responded to this problem by adopting crude and venturous political strategies. In Chapter 4, the authors then list the specific policies that have characterized the Punishment Imperative. What stands out in this part of the book is that the authors do not pick one specific law or policy as the punitive turning point. Instead, they divide the Punishment Imperative into three distinct phases. The first phase was structural sentencing reform, which started in the 1970s. Then came the implementation of different mandatory sentencing laws in the 1980s, while the final phase was characterized by the sentence lengthening legislation passed during the 1990s. Through this thorough historical analysis, Clear and Frost illustrate the complexity of the Punishment Imperative, and they clearly move away from using simplistic explanations such as the War on Drugs for the American punitive turn. Chapter 5 returns to the origins of the Punishment Imperative with an exploration of its “social impetus” (p. 114). Once more, the authors look beyond the simplistic explanation that rising crime rates led to the Punishment Imperative, some of which appears repetitive from the previous chapters of the book. The same holds true with Chapter 6, in which the Punishment Imperative is assessed and the social and racial inequalities it has created are highlighted once more.
While this book shines with details on the punitive policies of the 1970s to the 2000s and the use of the prison during that time, a reader should not expect a comprehensive history of punishment within the United States. The book is also not for anybody who is interested in how the United States compares to other countries in terms of crime and incarceration rates. Still, Clear and Frost’s book is an important read at a time when criminal justice reform is imminent. The reform proposals in the final chapter of the book (Chapter 7) are especially insightful, as they demonstrate that criminal justice reform must go beyond focusing on the nonviolent drug offender and must encompass broader sentencing reform that will shorten prison sentences for the violent offender as well. The authors capture this central argument well in the new introduction of their paperback edition from 2015 in which they write that “sweeping criminal justice reform and the end of mass incarceration sound appealing until one is faced with the hard reality that serious and violent offenders will absolutely have to be part of the plan as well” (p. xv). Finally, the authors stress that money must be spent on developing “the social stability of the very communities from which those [incarcerated] people came” (p. 179). Hence, an end of the Punishment Imperative can only be reached if the communities impacted by the punitive policies are directly involved in rebuilding their future.