Crime, Inequality and the State

Why has crime dropped while imprisonment grows? This well-edited volume of ground-breaking articles explores criminal justice policy in light of recent research on changing patterns of crime and criminal careers.

Highlighting the role of conservative social and political theory in giving rise to criminal justice policies, this innovative book focuses on such policies as ‘three strikes (two in the UK) and you’re out’, mandatory sentencing and widespread incarceration of drug offenders. It highlights the costs - in both money and opportunity - of increased prison expansion and explores factors such as:

• labour market dynamics
• the rise of a ‘prison industry’
• the boost prisons provide to economies of underdeveloped regions
• the spreading political disenfranchisement of the disadvantaged it has produced.

Throughout this book, hard facts and figures are accompanied by the faces and voices of the individuals and families whose lives hang in the balance. This volume, an essential resource for students, policy makers and researchers of criminology, criminal justice, social policy and criminal law, uses a compelling inter-play of theoretical works and powerful empirical research to present vivid portraits of individual life experiences.

Why has crime dropped while imprisonment grows? This well-edited volume of ground-breaking articles explores criminal justice policy in light of recent research on changing patterns of crime and criminal careers.

Highlighting the role of conservative social and political theory in giving rise to criminal justice policies, this innovative book focuses on such policies as ‘three strikes (two in the UK) and you’re out’, mandatory sentencing and widespread incarceration of drug offenders. It highlights the costs - in both money and opportunity - of increased prison expansion and explores factors such as:

• labour market dynamics


• the rise of a ‘prison industry’


• the boost prisons provide to economies of underdeveloped regions


• the spreading political disenfranchisement of the disadvantaged it has produced.

Throughout this book, hard facts and figures are accompanied by the faces and voices of the individuals and families whose lives hang in the balance. This volume, an essential resource for students, policy makers and researchers of criminology, criminal justice, social policy and criminal law, uses a compelling inter-play of theoretical works and powerful empirical research to present vivid portraits of individual life experiences.

Mary E. Vogel is Lecturer at King's College London School of Law, and Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School for Advanced Study, University of London. Since earning her doctorate at Harvard University, she has taught at several US institutions and been a Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation and the University of Oxford; Bunting Fellow at Harvard University; and John Adams Fellow at the University of London. Vogel is the author of Coercion to Compromise: Plea Bargaining, the Courts and the Making of Political Authority, as well as numerous articles. Her work won the American Sociological Association Law Section’s Article Prize for 2000 and the Law and Society Association’s Best Article Prize for 1999.