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"Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation"

By Douglas A. Berman

Thanks to the always great Prison Law Blog, I just discovered the very interesting article that shares a title with this title of this post. This piece is by Heather Schoenfeld in a recent issue of Law & Society Review.  Here is the abstract: In this article I examine how prison conditions litigation in the 1970s, as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, inadvertently contributed to the rise of mass incarceration in the United States.  Using Florida as a case study, I detail how prison conditions litigation that aimed to reduce incarceration was translated in the political arena as a court order to build prisons.  Drawing on insights from historical institutionalist scholarship, I argue that this paradox can be explained by considering the different historical and political contexts of the initial legal framing and the final compliance with the court order...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 13, 2011 (boomark / email).