The Social Psychology of Mass Imprisonment

The concept of mass imprisonment emerged at the turn of the 21st century in recognition of the intractable nature of the late modern penal explosion, especially in the USA (Lynch, 2011). What had been perceived in the previous two decades to be a dynamic yet alarming phenomenon – the rapid growth and expansion in the use of incarceration – had now taken on a sense of permanence and immutability. Theorists and empirical researchers expanded their inquiries that aimed to understand how and why the explosion happened and what its parameters were, to include assessments of the human impacts of mass incarceration. Thus, a growing body of work over the last decade has grappled with the social and psychological damage done by the imprisonment binge (Haney, 2006a; Western, 2006; Clear, 2007). The USA is generally seen as ‘ground zero’ for contemporary mass incarceration, for several reasons. First is the sheer size and scale of growth in imprisonment use across the USA. Our rates of incarceration, particularly in the southern and western states, are many times higher than our democratic peers; and the steep incline in those rates over a relatively short period of time is globally unprecedented. Second is the relatively sharp and dramatic turn away from the rehabilitative ideal and toward a more punitive model of imprisonment that accompanied this growth. As a nation, the USA was a leading innovator of penal rehabilitation in the early to mid 20th century, and so its relative abandonment beginning in the 1970s was striking. Finally, the influential role that the USA plays in shaping international criminal justice policies and practices has meant that American-style penality has been exported to jurisdictions around the world (Godoy, 2008; Wacquant, 2009). Because the USA offers the paradigmatic case of mass incarceration, this chapter will primarily focus upon the American transformations in punishment and their social psychological consequences. Nonetheless, I will also look to research on contemporary imprisonment in contexts outside of the USA in order to explore whether and to what degree the American case is exceptional. 11