Introduction

Chapter 1 explains why mass incarceration has failed to improve public safety and makes the case for expanding our understanding of public safety and how it can be achieved. The chapter also shows that the criminal legal system response to lawbreaking has continued to intensify in recent years even as many states have enacted reforms aimed at reducing prison populations and incarceration rates have declined modestly. And although the policies and practices that have fueled the expansion of the justice system are routinely justified as crime-fighting measures, research shows that mass incarceration is a short-sighted, ineffective, costly, inhumane, and overly narrow approach to public safety. The remainder of the chapter provides an overview of the book. Part I explores three underrecognized dynamics that are working to bolster mass incarceration. Part II identifies three broad policy and political changes that would notably reduce the scale and power of the criminal legal system and racial inequities in it while also addressing the social problems to which it is a failed response.