| Summary: | Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school dropouts in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought. His book dispels many of the myths about the relationships among crime, imprisonment, and inequality. While many people support the increase in incarceration because of reductions in crime in the 1990s, Western shows that the swelling prison population only explains one-tenth of the fall in crime. This book reveals a strong relationship between incarceration and severely dampened economic prospects for former inmates.
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