Presidents and Mass Incarceration: Choices at the Top, Repercussions at the Bottom

Mandatory minimum sentencing; "e;three-strikes-and-you're-out"e; legislation; harsher sentences and less parole and probation. The result of draconian criminal justice policies in the last six decades is that the United States is the largest incarcerator in the world, surpassing Russia and China, with significant overrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos in U.S. prisons, especially for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses.Presidents and Mass Incarceration: Choices at the Top, Repercussions at the Bottom shows how American presidents from Lyndon B. Johnson to Donald J. Trump have operated as significant political criminal justice entrepreneurs and how the leadership choices made at the top by these chief executives continue to have severe repercussions for the citizens at the lowest levels of our communities. Author Linda K. Mancillas references State of the Union Addresses, presidential initiatives, laws passed by Congress, Supreme Court decisions, and public opinion on high-profile crime events to assemble a cohesive framework of data that supports each president's impact on the incarceration explosion. Readers will come away with a greater appreciation for the complexity and magnitude of the political, economic, and societal issue of over-imprisonment that both the federal and state governments are attempting to address.