The Prison Dilemma: Getting Past the Punitive Turn

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama pledged to renew the nation's founding creed, to carry forward "that precious gift, that noble idea...that all are equal, all are free." Some 1.8 million people gathered on the National Mall to hear the new president on that icy January morning. Yet a considerably larger mass--equivalent to adding the population of Boston to the celebration--spent the same day behind bars. For America is not only the land of the free, as the Navy chorus chanted from the presidential dais. It is also, to an extraordinary extent, the land of the unfree, the most incarcerated society on earth.

The United States was not always so locked down. For most of the twentieth century its incarceration rate hovered near one-tenth of one percent, roughly the same as in other industrial free societies. Then, from the early 1970s forward, the federal and state governments began extending sentences, curtailing judicial discretion and restricting early releases. The prison population soared. By the end of George W. Bush's presidency, approximately one out of every 100 adults was in jail or prison, a proportion unmatched in the history of democracy.

During this same period, racial disparities in the criminal justice system have widened. At mid-century, during segregation, the black imprisonment rate was about four times higher than that of whites; by 2005 it was seven times higher. If current trends continue, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. For the grandchildren of Brown v. Board of Education on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder, American justice has become more separate and unequal, not less.

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