George and Margaret Barrock Lecture on Criminal Law

Description

PRISONERS OF POPULISM: UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICS OF MASS INCARCERATION

Rachel E. Barkow
New York University School of Law

We live in an age of mass incarceration and mass criminalization. These are the products of criminal justice policies created in a political environment that is often incapable of rational reflection or a sound weighing of costs and benefits. In particular, high-profile stories—not data or the specific facts of individual cases—drive criminal justice policy in the United States: The institutional structures that dominate jurisdictions throughout the country allow these stories and emotional reactions to overtake rational assessments of policies and laws. In this lecture, I will explain why our current political process produces these results and why the existing criminal justice infrastructure is ill-suited to reducing mass incarceration in the United States to any appreciable degree.