John Pfaff’s book Locked In was mentioned in a Vox article about mass incarceration and criminal justice reform.
I was a vehement proponent of what has been called the standard orthodoxy on American imprisonment and the epidemic of incarceration, which so many of us believe to be the moral crisis of our time. (Until this second moral crisis struck, perhaps, last year.) Briefly, it was the view that the epidemic of incarceration, among minorities particularly, had to do with “Draconian” drug laws and mandatory sentencing and private prison contractors.
Then this year I read John Pfaff’s book and articles showing, with evidence that seems to me irrefutable — and taking a shot or two at me along the way — that however horrific the epidemic might be, these were not its cause. (Pfaff thinks that mass incarceration is a horror, but that it has more to do with the epidemic of prosecutorial swashbuckling than any other single factor.) I read the book, saw the facts, swallowed hard, and wrote a piece saying that I was wrong and he was right, and was glad to have written it.
