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Democracy in the Age of Mass Incarceration

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Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville

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Abstract

The country that served as Tocqueville’s model for democracy and freedom is now the world’s largest captor. The US incarcerates its population at the highest rate in the world: 830 people per 100,000 of US adult residents (Kaeble and Cowhig, Correctional Populations in the United States, 2016. Bureau of Justice Statistics April, doi: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus16.pdf, 2018: 4). How does mass incarceration affect US democracy? This chapter argues that mass incarceration undermines American democracy by eroding the associational life of those incarcerated. Former prisoners have reduced engagement in civil and political associations due to the increased costs of participating in associational life. As a result, a large, growing portion of the US population is increasingly disengaged from political life. A smaller segment of the population forms, maintains, and enforces the laws in the US, fostering the despotism of which Tocqueville warned.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this chapter, I use mass incarceration to refer to the high rate of incarceration, large prison population, expansive prison facilities, and legislation affecting the lives of former prisoners and their families post-incarceration.

  2. 2.

    Gottschalk (2006) specifies three characteristics that define the US carceral state: “the sheer size of its prison and jail population; its reliance on harsh, degrading sanctions; and the persistence and centrality of the death penalty” (1).

  3. 3.

    For Tocqueville, equality did not refer to actual equality in wealth or ability, but an absence of class structures that prevent a group of people from having an opportunity to participate in the political or economics spheres.

  4. 4.

    The convict code was a spontaneous order development in which prisoners adhered to norms of interaction (Skarbek 2014: 27). Those prisoners who had experience serving time knew the code well, having learned it during their previous sentences. They taught it to first-time prisoners.

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  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Kaitlyn Woltz

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  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Peter J. Boettke

  2. Free Market Institute, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Adam Martin

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Woltz, K. (2020). Democracy in the Age of Mass Incarceration. In: Boettke, P., Martin, A. (eds) Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville. Mercatus Studies in Political and Social Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34937-0_7

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