SOC 002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Mass Incarceration, Prison Overcrowding, Food Security

• School: UC Riverside
• Department: Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies
• Course: SOC 002
• Professor: Sharon Oselin

Document Summary

Close to 2. 3 million americans are behind bars, which represents 1 percent of the adult population (pew 2008) Mass incarceration is a term to characterize extraordinarily high incarceration rates in the us. Mass incarceration is a contemporary and distinctly american development. Its disproportionately affects disadvantaged subgroups of the population. Until the mid 1970s, the incarceration rate in the united states was similar to the incarceration rate in european countries (ex. This tough on crime approach started in the 1970s, which began the substantial of imprisonment in the us. The policy shifts that produced and sustained the growth of imprisonment included: An increase in the rate of return to custody of those under various forms of munity supervision. In the short term, a massive increase rates of imprisonment can suppress crime by deterrence and incapacitation. Over the last 30 years, while there have been periodic fluctuations crime in the us, overall, the crime rate has remained stable.