Addicted to Incarceration: Corrections Policy and the Politics of Misinformation in the United States

In Addicted to Incarceration, author Travis Pratt uses an evidence-based approach to explore the consequences of what he terms America's "addiction to incarceration," highlighting the scope of the problem, the nature of the political discussions surrounding criminal justice policy in general and corrections policy in particular, and the social cost of incarceration.

Pratt demonstrates that the United States' addiction to incarceration has been fueled by American citizens' opinions about crime and punishment, the effectiveness of incarceration as a means of social control, and perhaps most important, by policies legitimized by faulty information (e.g.,fear of crime is objectively linked to victimization, petty offenders mature into violent predators, and persistent offending can be accurately predicted over the life course). Analyzing crime policies as they relate to crime rates and U.S. society's ability to both lower the crime rate and address the role of incarceration in preventing future crime, the book shows students how ineffective our rush to incarcerate has been in the last decade, as well as offering recommendations and insights into the future of this problem.

Features

• Real world examples that put a human face on the issues open each chapter
• Race, ethnicity, and gender issues underlie all discussions and address key aspects of incarceration rates and crime trends
• The social costs of incarceration are explored, including the heightened inmate risk of personal victimization, incarceration's effect as a barrier to successful offender reintegration into society, and its role in exacerbating existing racial inequalities
• The final chapter contains conclusions and recommendations for future policy makers

Written in an informal and accessible style, Addicted to Incarceration is appropriate for criminal justice policy or corrections courses at the undergraduate level and can also be used as a supplementary text in introductory criminal justice, criminology, and critical issues in criminal justice courses.

Travis C. Pratt received his degrees from Washington State University (B.A., Political Science; M.A., Criminal Justice) and the University of Cincinnati (Ph.D., Criminal Justice).  He has been on the Faculty of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark and was the Director of the Program in Criminal Justice at Washington State University before joining the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, where he is currently an Associate Professor.

     His research and publications focus primarily on structural and integrated theories of crime and delinquency (including macro-level, multilevel-level, and individual-level approaches to the study of criminal/deviant behavior) and correctional policy (both institutional and community corrections).  Aside from these areas, his recent work also addresses the role of race in police decision-making and multi-jurisdictional task force approaches to drug interdiction.  He has published over forty articles that have appeared in the leading peer-reviewed journals in the field, including:  Crime and Delinquency; Crime and Justice: A Review of Research; Criminology; Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency; and Justice Quarterly.  He received the 2006 Ruth Shonle Cavan Outstanding Young Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology for his research and scholarship.