The United States has the world’s largest population of incarcerated people. More than a million Americans are imprisoned and hundreds of thousands more are held in jails. This vast system has doled out punishment — particularly to people from marginalized groups — on an unfathomable scale.

At the same time, the criminal justice system has failed to secure public safety. Why does the United States see punishment as the main response to social harm, and what are the alternatives?

Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration explores the damage from this approach through a collection of essays by scholars, practitioners, activists, and writers, including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Edited by Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program and author of Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration, this newly published book argues that the United States cannot reduce mass incarceration until we confront our excessive impulse to punish.

Examining topics from policing to prosecution to sentencing, the essays trace how a maze of local, state, and federal agencies have contributed to mass incarceration and deterred attempts at reform. They shed light on how the excesses of America’s criminal justice system are entwined with poverty, racism, and the legacy of slavery.

A wide-ranging and powerful look at the failures of the status quo, Excessive Punishment also looks forward to how we might reimagine the justice system to support restoration instead of retribution.

Purchase your copy here. To learn more about the Brennan Center and our work on justice, civil liberties, and democracy, check out brennancenter.org.

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