The United States arrests, punishes, and locks up far more
people-both juveniles and adults-than any other democratic country
in the world. Indeed, despite the fact that the U.S holds 5 percent
of the world's population, it contains 25 percent of its prisoners.
These individuals not only constitute a disproportionately large
group, but also suffer decreased employment opportunities and
housing discrimination after their release, making a return to
prison all the more likely. Headlines of articles in US media
allude to "Prison Without Punishment" in Germany and "Radical
Humaneness" in Norway, but why are prison conditions in those
countries so notably less bleak than those here? And when
recidivism rates are lower in countries with these kinder, gentler
prisons than in America, why do prisons here remain so harsh? In
Unusually Cruel, Mark Morje Howard argues that the United States'
prison system is exceptional-in a truly shameful way. Due to its
exceptional nature, most scholars have focused on the internal
dynamics that have produced the US' unusually large and severe
prison system. Howard conducts a comparative analysis as a
corrective to this myopia, demonstrating just how far the US lies
outside of the norm of established democracies in this regard. He
uses a new methodology in order to put American incarceration rates
in perspective. The book compares data from 21 countries-all
advanced industrialized societies, liberal democracies, and OECD
members-ultimately showing that the US holds more than three times
the number of incarcerated people of its closest competitor, New
Zealand. This method reveals interesting findings, including that,
although the female incarceration rate is only a fraction of the
male incarceration in America, the US imprisons more than five
times as many women as any other comparable country. And
strikingly, while crime rates are roughly equal among countries in
the western world, the US incarceration rate is seven times the
average rate of European countries. Howard shows that in every
measure of punitiveness-including policing, sentencing, prison
conditions, and rehabilitation-US policies are harsher, producing
worse individual outcomes and lower public safety, than those of
any comparable country. The book does not merely paint a grim
picture, however. Unusually Cruel also identifies solutions that
are less punishing and more productive, arguing that, by learning
from models that have worked elsewhere, the US can get out of its
criminal justice quagmire.
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