All too often, they were imprisoned under mandatory sentencing laws that were passed with the image of the hardened violent career criminal in mind. Instead, as the authors show, in a distortion of social justice, millions who committed relatively benign acts, often motivated by dire financial need, are cruelly confined to long terms in prison. During the last two years of the millennium over one million prisoners who had been convicted of nonviolent offenses languished behind bars.
Authors demonstrate that as budgets for incarceration increase, budgets for education decrease.
After release, the ex-prisoners face even dimmer prospects of finding work and achieving a satisfying lifestyle. The contemporary prison experience often converts them into social misfits and there is a growing likelihood that they will return to crime and other forms of deviance upon release from incarceration.