ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the nature of mass incarceration in the United States. It presents the current state of incarceration in both cross-national and historical terms within the United States. The chapter discusses some of the key recent trends in the philosophy and application of punishment that may provide insight into the future of mass incarceration in America. African Americans are incarcerated at a rate nearly six times that of whites, and Hispanics are twice as likely to be incarcerated as whites—patterns that hold when examining incarceration rates for women as well and seem to have gotten much worse over time. Viewed in this way, some have even argued that the term "mass" incarceration is a bit of a misnomer because it turns out that incarceration rates are—and have always been—a lot more "mass" for some groups of people than they are for others. American incarceration rates were instead relatively modest and stable for most of the nation's history.
