Ending Mass Incarceration is a Moral Imperative

The movement against mass incarceration has made major strides in the past few years with politicians and the media becoming significantly less enthralled with prisons and prison populations themselves are dropping modestly. However further progress, let alone a major effort to reverse the explosive growth of imprisonment over the last three decades, is by no means assured. Many of the factors that produced mass incarceration, including the structure of sentencing laws, prosecutorial attitudes, policing practices and court routines remains very much intact. This essay recommends five strategies to increase the chance that the present conjuncture leads to deep change and avoids the stabilization of the prison population into "mass incarceration lite."