Mass Incarceration On Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America - Softcover

Finalist for the Media for a Just Society Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency

"Simon's arguments are unique...it's hard not to agree with Simon that the policies of mass incarceration...are one of the greatest human rights abuses in this century."
--Los Angeles Review of Books

"An impassioned plea for prison reform grounded in human dignity...a sound, sobering report."
--Kirkus

"An eloquent critique of the American prison system...Simon's accessible and powerful book deserves widespread attention."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Yet another sign of the new optimism about criminal justice reform."
--David Cole, New York Review of Books

"Remarkable...In mapping a way forward, Simon introduces innovative legal devices to ensure that mass incarceration joins the nation's past aberrations from our democracy."
--New York Law Journal

"Simon fits the numbers into a frame that renders them disturbingly intelligible."
--Inside Higher Ed

"Anyone who believes that the United States does not torture prisoners in domestic lock-up need only read Jonathan Simon's book...to be disabused of this delusion."
--Truthout

"Both a useful guide to Plata and an effective polemic against the United States' excessive reliance on prisons."
--Reason

"A masterful job of assessing the qualitative shift in the court's analysis on human rights concerns as they apply to our notorious prison system, the book points the way to a legal strategy premised on human dignity as a means of challenging mass incarceration."
--Marc Mauer, executive director, The Sentencing Project, and author of Race to Incarcerate

"A powerful critique of California's use of mass incarceration combined with an inspiring vision of a hopeful future created by landmark court decisions."
--Jules Lobel, president, Center for Constitutional Rights

"Highly readable, stunning stuff. California is at the epicenter of a new American debate about prison policy and Simon's remarkable book places the state's travails in national and historical context. I recommend it to anyone interested in the problem of prisons in America."
--Todd Clear, author of The Punishment Imperative

"[Jonathan Simon is] one of the outstanding criminologists of his generation."
--Nikolas Rose, London School of Economics

In this impassioned plea for human dignity” (Kirkus Reviews) Jonathan Simon called one of the outstanding criminologists of his generation” by Nikolas Rose of the London School of Economics charts 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 on Trial highly readable, stunning,” Slate says the book could mark the beginning of a new era in American jurisprudence,” and David Cole in the New York Review of Books calls Simon’s work a sign of the new optimism about criminal justice reform.”