Description
Book SynopsisIn this impassioned plea for human dignity (Kirkus Reviews) Jonathan Simoncalled one of the outstanding criminologists of his generation by Nikolas Rose of the London School of Economicscharts a surprising path to end mass incarceration in America. Using the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Plata on overcrowding in California prisons as his starting point, Simon suggests that incarcerating people on a mass scale simply cannot be accomplished in comportment with the Eighth Amendment''s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
In an argument that the Los Angeles Review of Books calls unique, Simon contends that because we cannot offer meaningful health care, mental health care, or safe and reasonable prison conditions when prisons are run at many times their maximum capacity, mass incarceration is fundamentally incompatible with humane treatment.
Todd Clear, former dean of Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, calls Mass Incarceration
