With the recent attention incarceration rates have received, we wanted to share some excerpts from Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, by Marie Gottschalk.

The book was recently reviewed in the Financial Times and the reviewer wrote that it left him realizing that the problem was far worse than he imagined.

The book’s author is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who believes the problem is insurmountable. She writes, “The carceral state is too deeply, and too profitable for too many special interests.” Something all of us involved in “the system” realize.

She called out the State of Florida and the treatment of Sex Offenders as particularly harrowing:

2.2m people are in jail. A total of 8m are “under some form of state control”, including probation. One in 10 children has had a parent behind bars. About 2.5 per cent of voting-age Americans — and 10 per cent of those in Florida — are disenfranchised because of criminal convictions.

The “new untouchables” are sex offenders, from paedophiles and rapists to consumers of child pornography.

“Sex offenders have become the fastest-growing segment of state and federal prison populations”, accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the inmates in some states. Once released, many face “ritual exile”, including registration and residency restrictions. “No other industrialised democracy imposes such lengthy sanctions on sex offenders or keeps them so ensnared long after they have completed their criminal sentences.”