Because it’s tradition: Exploring the role of ritual in the modern carceral state

• In Event: 2323 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 1. Crime, Law and Deviance at an Intersection

Abstract

The term “mass incarceration” is used to describe the enormous growth of the US prison population from 1972 until 2009. Even after nearly a decade of annual decline, the US still has the highest prison population rate of any country. At the end of 2016, more than 2,000,000 individuals were in US prisons and more than 6,600,000 were under some type of correctional control. The latter number understates the total amount of justice involvement of people in the US because it fails to account for the US’ practice of frequent, short-term jailing. In any given year, people go to jail in the US more than 10,000,000 times. Incarceration practices of the US are especially interesting because of: the period of massive growth; its uniqueness compared to other OECD countries; the increasing privatization of State-sanctioned punishment; and the recent stalls in growth and massive calls for reform. Using the ideas of Durkheim and DuBois, this paper will try to explain what caused and sustained the era of mass incarceration in the US, as well as what might be driving the recent reform efforts.

Author

• Ruth M Wygle, Duke University