Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

After spending months, years, or decades incarcerated, well over a half-million persons return to their communities each year. What transpires is significant because it reflects the utility of imprisonment: how ex-offenders thrive or fail on reentry. Eight previous vetted studies examined this population with different sample sizes, follow-up times, and numbers of participants retained at the end of the research period. This ninth undertaking, the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), draws from the strengths of earlier research and provides the best analysis to date of the reentry experience. Western, a Harvard sociologist, is an eminent researcher on mass incarceration. Furthermore, he writes with grace and simplicity, making his narrative understandable and persuasive to any college-educated reader interested in criminal justice. The BRS begins with 122 participants who were first interviewed in prison a month prior to their release and follows 91 percent for at least one year. This hugely important study reflects how the poverty-addiction-family dysfunction nexus often leads to incarceration, making successful reentry a challenge. Prison administrators and legislators should be asking themselves why their penal institutions can't be smarter. Western's account ends with research-based recommendations for public policies.--lgSumming Up: Essential for criminal justice collections. Most levels/libraries.

The US (like every other great nation) is exceptional. What other nation has the Constitution, democratic processes, highest caloric intake, and professionalized school sports? The US is also exceptional in being the world's most punitive nation, a dreary distinction that began just four decades ago. Government and law professor Howard (Georgetown) takes this phenomenon in a new, unusually provocative direction: US-style incarceration is "unusually cruel" relative to economically advanced nations. The trend began with bipartisan legislative overreaction to increasing crime and drug use. The locked-up body count swelled as plea bargaining grew, elected prosecutors racked up their conviction numbers, and opportunities for reintegration in the community became tighter. Meanwhile, jail and prison institutions themselves became cruel relative to practices in France, Germany, and the UK, which Howard references. Rehabilitation in the US fell out of favor. Politicians made the trend possible based on a theme of being tough on crime. While long sentences in bleak institutions with a stigmatized future for those returning seems to be tough, it is really stupid on crime. Howard's brilliant analysis points to four enduring factors: persistent racism, evangelical religion, the politics of reelection, and profit-making from the incarcerated.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.