The Constitutional Crisis of Imprisonment: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American D

With only 5% of the world’s population, the United States has 25% of the world’s prisoners. Our incarceration rate – 730 per 100,000 people – is by far the highest in the world.

African-Americans are imprisoned at nearly six times the rate of whites, and Hispanics at two and a half times the rate of whites. Many prisoners are held in conditions that violate their Constitutional rights, as ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court (Brown v. Plata, 2011).

The cost of this massive imprisonment, along with the ever-expanding growth of the for-profit prison sector, is borne by the U.S. taxpayer; the President’s FY 2013 budget request for the Federal Bureau of Prisons totals $6.9 billion, while the total expenditure by states is $52 billion (2011).

How did we get to this point, and where can we go from here? Join three distinguished Berkeley scholars as they discuss the history, growth, and future of America’s prison-industrial complex, and its relevance to Constitutional freedoms.

Featured Panelists:

Rebecca McLennan – Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley
Author of The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776 – 1941 (2008)

Jonathan Simon – Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law
Author of Mass Incarceration on Trial: Courts and the Future of American Prisons (forthcoming)

Frank Zimring – Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law
Author of The City That Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control (2011)