Researching Law, Vol. 21, No. 3
The U.S. prison population has grown exponentially in the last decades of the twentieth century. The Pew Center on the States estimated in 2008 that slightly more than 1 in 100 adults were incarcerated, disproportionately concentrated among minorities and the poor. This means that the carceral system has become an overarching and influential presence in the lives of individuals who are convicted of crime, but also among their families, communities, and social networks. This edition of Researching Law presents recent research from ABF’s Traci Burch and John Hagan to explore the consequences of the modern carceral system on the lives of the people it criminalizes.