ABSTRACT
The study of mass incarceration now mostly focuses on the causes and the consequences of mass incarceration, but it leaves open the question of whether simply having a large amount of people in prisons and jails might be intrinsically wrong. Moreover, the major philosophical theories of punishment (deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation) fail to explain why jailing a large number of people might be per se wrong, even if instances of punishing taken one by one could be justified. Answering fully the question of what makes mass incarceration wrong, this chapter argues, involves explaining why a state that imprisons a large number of its own citizens risks becoming illegitimate, because serious questions of political legitimacy are raised when a main (if not the primary) way the state relates to many of its citizens is by means of incarceration.
