ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to look at the causes of mass imprisonment through two different lenses: the micro and the macro. The micro approach looks at how the casual factors shape prison within a period, while the macro examines how changes in these factors cause us to transition from one “era” to the next. The push away from punitiveness was motivated by macro-level pressures such as the desire by elites to instill order in the unruly early days of the country. A series of macro-level shifts in the 1960s and 1970s—rising crime, rising resistance to the gains from the Civil Rights Movement, the stress of economic stagnation—then pushed the United States in a more punitive direction. The post-crisis decarceration sharply illuminates how the political significance of the macro changes likely matters more than the changes themselves. Macro conditions can change, making reform more or less viable; at no point are changes inevitable, whether towards rehabilitation or punitiveness.
