Sunbelt Justice Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment [Hardcover]

In the late 20th century, the United States experienced an incarceration explosion. Over the course of twenty years, the imprisonment rate quadrupled, and today more than than 1.5 million people are held in state and federal prisons. Arizona's Department of Corrections came of age just as this shift toward prison warehousing began, and soon led the pack in using punitive incarceration in response to crime.Sunbelt Justicelooks at the development of Arizona's punishment politics, policies, and practices, and brings to light just how and why we have become a mass incarceration nation. Mona Lynch's insightful analysis of Arizona's war on crime sheds new and important light on penal politics and trajectories.Sunbelt Justiceis a must-read for those seeking to understand how the United States became home to the largest prison system and prisoner population the world has ever known, as well as how local circumstances shaped the way this process unfolded in Arizona. How did Arizonaa low tax, low incarceration state in Barry Goldwater's heydaybecome one of the nation's leading carceral states in the age of mass imprisonment? Mona Lynch provides a compelling and illuminating answer. By showing that rehabilitative ideas came late to Arizona, never fully displacing the state's low-cost, no frills punitive traditions; by connecting institutional actors and events to larger cultural patterns; and by viewing Arizona's history within the broader story of the Sunbelt statesLynch develops a powerful account of the regional roots of the American present. More than the penal history of a single state,Sunbelt Justiceis an important new perspective on the emergence of mass imprisonment. Sunbelt Justiceis full of colorful characters who do not hesitate to express their devotion to discipline and to express their resentment of outsiders who meddle in their institutions.... It effectively shows that Arizona and the other new states of the American Southwest wlCÅ