A groundbreaking examination of our system of imprisonment, revealing the true causes of mass incarceration as well as the best path to reform

In the 1970s, the United States had an incarceration rate comparable to those of other liberal democracies-and that rate had held steady for over 100 years. Yet today, though the US is home to only about 5 percent of the world's population, we hold nearly one quarter of its prisoners. Mass incarceration is now widely considered one of the biggest social and political crises of our age. How did we get to this point?

Locked In is a revelatory investigation into the root causes of mass incarceration by one of the most exciting scholars in the country. Having spent fifteen years studying the data on imprisonment, John Pfaff takes apart the reigning consensus created by Michelle Alexander and other reformers, revealing that the most widely accepted explanations-the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on private prisons-tell us much less than we think. Pfaff urges us to look at other factors instead, including a major shift in prosecutor behavior that occurred in the mid-1990s, when prosecutors began bringing felony charges against arrestees about twice as often as they had before. He describes a fractured criminal justice system, in which counties don't pay for the people they send to state prisons, and in which white suburbs set law and order agendas for more-heavily minority cities. And he shows that if we hope to significantly reduce prison populations, we have no choice but to think differently about how to deal with people convicted of violent crimes-and why some people are violent in the first place.

An authoritative, clear-eyed account of a national catastrophe, Locked In transforms our understanding of what ails the American system of punishment and ultimately forces us to reconsider how we can build a more equitable and humane society.

About the Author
John F. Pfaff is a Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. His work on mass incarceration, prosecutors, and criminal justice reform has been covered in The Economist, The New Yorker, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, Slate, and Vox, among many others. He has a JD and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews
"With rigor and specificity, John Pfaff sifts through the data to mount a convincing case about the causes of mass incarceration and the levers by which we can undo it. A must-read for anyone who dreams of an America that is not the world's most imprisoned nation." -Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes and author of A Colony in a Nation "The significant political and practical challenges of transforming society's response to violence may help explain why voters and politicians cling to the myth that prisons will empty out if we simply reduce penalties for nonviolent drug crimes. The road of reform laid out by Pfaff and Forman is a relatively harder one to walk. But if the desired destination is an end to mass incarceration, it's the only way to get there."-Washington Post (Wonkblog) "A succinct, powerful explanation of why much of what we think about the incarceration boom is probably wrong." -Bloomberg View "An important new book." -Washington Monthly "A valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion about justice reform... Packed with charts and figures, it's candy to the numbers-loving brain, but even those who weary of statistics are sure to find some interesting tidbits... Peppered throughout are fascinating details about our justice system that you probably won't find elsewhere... Maybe it's time to stop arguing about who broke America. LOCKED IN gives us some ideas for how we might fix it." -National Review "[Pfaff's] exacting prose meticulously explores every data set and perspective... [he] constructs a new narrative, focusing attention on four dimensions of criminal justice too frequently overlooked: local criminal justice systems, the role of prosecutors, the failed politics of punitive punishment and violent offenders... required reading for students, citizens, activists and policy reformers interested in excavating how our system of hyper-incarceration was constructed incrementally over decades." -America Magazine "Provocative and packed with data, Locked In will change how you think about what's wrong with the criminal justice system and how to fix it. A book that will be instantly integral to solving one of the country's most important challenges." -Emily Bazelon, Senior Research Scholar in Law, Yale University, and author of Sticks and Stones "Timely and authoritative, Pfaff's discussion of mass incarceration provides a valuable and accessible addition to the prison reform narrative and an excellent analysis of the U.S. criminal justice system." -Library Journal "A thorough and demanding examination of a problem that has no easy solutions and a challenge to policymakers to discard prior notions about the nature of the problem and the needed reforms." -Kirkus Reviews "In Locked In, John Pfaff delivers a brilliant lesson in myth-busting that anyone interested in reform of our criminal justice system must heed. Our mass incarceration crisis is not chiefly due to an unholy alliance of legislatures and police in carrying out the War on Drugs, nor is it true that a massive share of American prisoners are 'nonviolent drug offenders.' Combining his lawyer's understanding of institutional practice with an economist's cold-eyed commitment to empirical fact, Pfaff points us to other causes, and the key one is a nationwide phenomenon of prosecutors filing felony charges and seeking longer sentences, often de facto life sentences, for violent crimes that were once treated more sensibly. The powerful lesson is that rational cost-benefit analysis can be a partner to human decency in redeeming lives that still hold promise, and in ending our status as an embarrassing international anomaly." -Professor Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center "Locked In is a game changer for those who care about the crisis of mass incarceration. John Pfaff's virtuosic effort explodes what he calls the 'Standard Story,' showing us that the morally satisfying answers to questions about mass incarceration are usually wrong and that the solutions are almost always more banal-making them harder to accomplish. Most importantly, Locked In is not satisfied with providing this new and compelling framework for understanding why America locks up more people than any other nation in history. It goes further to provide concrete solutions that should be part of any roadmap for reform. If you want to change how we imprison people, you have to read this book!" -Phillip Atiba Goff, President of the Center for Policing Equity and Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice



Book Information
ISBN 9780465096916
Author John Pfaff
Format Hardback
Page Count 272
Imprint Basic Books
Publisher Basic Books
Weight(grams) 520g
Dimensions(mm) 238mm * 154mm * 34mm