Wisconsin Sentencing in the Tough-on-Crime Era - How Judges Retained Power and Why Mass Incarceration Happened Anyway

The increase in US prison populations since the 1970s is often blamed on the mandatory sentencing required by ""three strikes"" laws and other punitive crime bills. Michael O'Hear shows that the blame is actually not so easily assigned. His meticulous analysis of incarceration in Wisconsin explores the reasons why the prison population has ballooned.