Amy E. Lerman examines the shift from rehabilitation to punitivism that has taken place in the politics and practice of American corrections.

Amy E. Lerman is Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She has served as Vice President of Policy Studies for the political consulting firm Attention America, worked as a freelance speechwriter for members of the US Congress, and been a research consultant of the Prison University Project and faculty of the college program at San Quentin State Prison.

1. The modern prison paradox; 2. Symbolic politics, crime control, and the punitive team; 3. Public policy, punishment, and the creation of fractured community; 4. The culture and consequence of prison institutions: the case of California; 5. The social effects of incarceration; 6. The social effects of prison work; 7. From individuals to communities; 8. Criminal justice, community, the road to reform; 9. Epilogue (or: how I went to Berkeley and wound up in prison).