Marie Gottschalk

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“As it doubled down on pursuing and punishing people accused of street and drug crimes and immigration offenses, the United States retreated from regulating corporations and prosecuting and punishing their executives despite a tsunami of elite-level criminal activities by leading banks, accounting firms and major corporations. Keeping the public focus on immigration offenses, drug crimes, homicides, robberies, and other street crimes was a winning strategy to rivet political attention and public resources on battling crime in the streets, not crime in the suites.”

“The United States is an exceptionally militarized, lethal, and violent country. The growing concentration of economic, political, and military power is draining America of vital resources to sustain healthy and peaceful communities. It is pushing more people to the margins, where a police officer, prison cell, a tent, a military recruiter, or a deadly dose of fentanyl-laced heroin is waiting for them.”

“[R]egistered sex offenders are subject to an Alice-in-Wonderland maze of civil commitment laws, and community notification, registration, and residency restrictions that amount to a kind of ritual exile.”

“Thanks to the escalation in the number of people serving life and other lengthy sentences, prisons are becoming maximum-security nursing homes.”

“In many European countries, if a “lifer” does not continue to pose a major threat to public safety, he or she is typically released after serving approximately twelve years. This is similar to the practice that used to prevail in many states.”

“The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few ardent defenders today. But reforms to reduce the number of people in jail and prison have been remarkably modest so far. Meanwhile, a tenacious carceral state has sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment and has been extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It includes not only the country’s vast archipelago of jails and prisons, but also the far-reaching and growing range of penal punishments and controls that lies in the never-never land between the prison gate and full citizenship.”

“Americans have been habituated throughout much of their history to indulge in a politics of moralism and law and order in the context of a state that, until recently, had rather limited capacity and legitimacy in the area of law enforcement.”