This volume includes chapters by leading criminologists, sociologists and historians that set out what is known about the political and penological causes of the phenomenon of mass imprisonment. It describes mass imprisonment′s impact upon crime, upon the minority communities most affected, upon social policy and, more broadly upon national culture.

Introduction - David Garland The Meaning of Mass Imprisonment The Causes and Consequences of Prison Growth in the United States - Marc Mauer Fear and Loathing in Late Modernity - Jonathan Simon Reflections on the Cultural Sources of Mass Imprisonment in the United States Television, Public Space and Prison Population - Thomas Mathiesen A Commentary on Mauer and Simon Governing Social Marginality - Katherine Beckett and Bruce Western Welfare Incarceration and the Transformation of State The Macho Penal Economy - David Downes Mass Incarceration in the United States- A European Perspective Novus ordo saeclorum? A Commentary on Downes, and on Beckett and Western - David Greenberg Deadly Symbiosis - Lo[ac]ic Wacquant When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Merge Going Straight - Elijah Anderson The Story of a Young Inner-City Ex-Convict Bringing the Individual Back In - Jerome Miller A Commentary on Wacquant and Anderson Imprisonment Rates and the New Politics of Criminal Punishment - Franklin Zimring Unthought Thoughts - Michael Tonry The Influence of Changing Sensibilities on Penal Policies Facts, Values and Prison Policies - James B Jacobs A Commentary on Zimrig and Tonry The Private and the Public in Penal History - Alex Lichtenstein A Commentary on Zimrig and Tonry Epilogue - Alex Garland The New Iron Cage