Addicted To Incarceration By Travis C. Pratt: Summary

Addicted to Incarceration is a research book that was written by Travis C. Pratt, a professor at Washington State University. The main purpose of writing this book was to point out that the USA imprisons more of our population than any other nation. Pratt says, "On the one hand, we have constructed the biggest prison system on the planet… On the other hand, the United States has also been, and continues to be, the most violent industrialized nation in the world…. It is apparent, therefore, that our willingness to lock-up such a large proportion of the American citizenry has failed to result in a corresponding increase in public safety" (p. 3-4).
In the book Pratt also talks about how this incarceration addiction has increased over 600% in the last few years. Yet, the crime rate still continues to grow. Pratt states, "this growth in our correctional system has been aided by policy makers’ use of faulty information about (1) crime, (2), the desires of the American public, and (3) the efficacy of incarceration as a crime control strategy"(p. 26). Some politicians have crime as
38). The new, younger inmates are people who would have been put on probation years ago, which has been proven to be more effective than jailing.
At first I found this book very hard to read, but the more I got in to it, I really enjoyed it and enjoyed learning more about incarceration. Pratt brings up a lot of points in the book that make you look at things under a different perspective. This book is very detailed with a lot of research and dedication put into it. I do agree with most of the things that Pratt speaks about, and I definitely think that the rate of incarceration is getting too high for something that isn’t even