ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the phenomenon of 'mass imprisonment', more commonly known in the USA as 'mass incarceration', which emerged there from the mid-1970s onwards, and arguably also across a number of other western post-colonial countries. The chapter summarises the dimensions of the incarceration explosion in the USA, with brief reference also to Australia. It defines the key characteristics of mass incarceration: its magnitude and racial concentration. The effects of mass incarceration on prisoners, their families and communities, its 'collateral consequences', will be outlined, mainly through work in an epidemiological tradition. The importance of seeing mass incarceration as a consequence of social and political policy choices rather than simply the operation of criminal law, is emphasised throughout. A normative commitment to redressing social and racial injustice, and a politics of democratic community engagement from below that can best animate such commitments, are necessary lest success be calculated only in instrumental or managerial terms.
