A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America

by Ernest Drucker

When Dr. John Snow first traced an outbreak of cholera to a water pump in the Soho district of London in 1854, the field of epidemiology was born. Taking the same public health approaches and tools that have successfully tracked epidemics of flu, tuberculosis, and AIDS over the intervening one hundred and fifty years, Ernest Drucker makes the case that our current unprecedented level of imprisonment has become an epidemic—a plague upon our body politic.

Drucker, an internationally recognized public health scholar and Soros Justice Fellow, spent twenty years treating drug addiction and another twenty studying AIDS in some of the poorest neighborhoods of the South Bronx and worldwide. He
compares mass incarceration to other, well-recognized epidemics using basic public health concepts: “prevalence and incidence,” “outbreaks,” “contagion,” “transmission,” and “potential years of life lost.”

He argues that imprisonment—originally conceived as a response to individuals’ crimes—has become mass incarceration: a destabilizing force that undermines the families and communities it targets, damaging the very social structures that prevent crime.

Sure to provoke debate, this book shifts the paradigm of how we think about punishment by demonstrating that our unprecedented rates of incarceration have the contagious and self-perpetuating features of the plagues of previous centuries.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Social Justice, Sociology, Psychology, Social Issues, Health

240 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 2011

Reviews

[Eric Lotke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give it five stars because it’s important. But please be careful. It’s academic non-fiction so it isn’t fun. It’s readable and easy, as academic non-fiction goes -- but know what you’ve signed up for.

The thesis is simple and interesting. Prisons (and jails) spread in America since roughly 1980, from a rate of incarceration that was ordinary by historical and international norms, to seven times historical and international norms. Why? How? Drucker trackers the spread of prisons like an epidemiologist (because he is) tracking a disease. Something dangerous spread through the population. Years of life were lost. Drucker examines the causes, conditions, agents and environment that spread the plague. He shifts the paradigm from law enforcement to public health – and in so doing, shows the cure.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

i wanna give this 3.5 stars. firstly, because i really liked learning about the development of 'epidimiology' in the West as a science of public health. secondly, scientific formulae and tables are a nice break from the theoretical and genealogical approaches i'm so used to reading about prisons. thirdly, this book made me think about the decriminalisation of drugs on a larger scale and its role in decarceration from a public health perspective.
however i only gave it 3 stars because there was a number of limits to this approach. It implied that it was "mass" incarceration that was the issue of seriousness (needs downscaling rather than abolishing), focused on drug sentencing only (reconstructing "innocence" for some populations, abandoning others), and the emphasis on sheer numbers downplayed the gendered dimensions of imprisonment (as women and trans people represent a smaller proportion of the overall population, yet this continues their historical neglect in discussions of punishment).
nevertheless, this is a good read for health/public policy/prison nerds because it offers a different framework for interpretation.

[Melissa Ooten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes me want to be an epidemiologist.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of epidemiology, its relationship to social science, and how race and drug policy impacted judicial systems and prison populations. Geographic scope (the Bronx) and context is limited--it's not really an overview of all issues around increased prison use, of drug policies in all states, or of issues around important topics such as pregnancy and parenting.

[Maggie Olson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my second time reading this book, the first during a criminal justice epidemiology course in school. This book does exactly what it says - it uses epidemiological methods to describe the problem of mass incarceration in America.

This book is a little dry, I wish there were more stores and anecdotes included.

[Ketevan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of basic epidemiology and mass incarceration. It was very repetitive at points and overall the book could have been much tighter, by ~50 pages at least.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking at prisons through public health lens. Not as in the public health impact of prisons, but prisons as themselves behaving like a disease. Novel and insightful.

[Gwen Daniels · Rating 3 out of 5]

Epidemiologist Ernest Drucker compares mass incarceration to other, well-recognized epidemics using basic public health concepts, making a strong case that imprisonment has become a destabilizing force that undermines the families and communities it targets, damaging the very social structures that prevent crime. Despite his unique angle, Drucker doesn't necessarily reveal anything new or enlightening about the problems with our prison system; for that reason, I wouldn't recommend the book to friends with an established interest in prison reform. And although the book's easy to digest, Drucker doesn't offer the strong solutions that an epidemic of any kind begs for, which means I wouldn't recommend the book to a "criminology beginner," either.

Drucker's passion for epidemiology vividly comes through his chapters on the AIDS epidemic, which he uses to introduce laymen to the basic public health concepts he later uses to describe the effects of incarceration. (Think "prevalence and incidence," "outbreaks," "contagion," "transmission," etc.) Perhaps because of Drucker's own contagious enthusiasm, I enjoyed these chapters most, more of a primer to epidemiology than anything else.

[Ralph Orr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Internationally recognized epidemiologist Ernest Drucker applies his medical training to America's policy of mass incarceration. Wide-scale imprisonment has not always been the American way. Prison populations exploded with the war on drugs, once politicians and law enforcement officials decided that minor nonviolent [espcially drug] offenses deserved some level of imprisonment. Drucker asks: at what point does incarceration become counter-productive? When does it do more harm then good? Drucker examines prison's effect on the individual, on families, on communities, on health care and on each states' ability to deliver quality services to all their populations. He asks, does our plague of prisons promote the common good or harm the common good? At our current level of incarceration, the answer becomes quite obvious. Those who want to know why should read this book.

[Daniel Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific (and terrifying) look at the US prison system from the perspective of epidemiology (the study of distribution and cause of disease). Worth reading for anyone interested in justice or drug policy, as it charts the rise of mass imprisonment from a new perspective. It looks quite heavily at how sentencing large sections of certain groups to prison can greatly heighten the odds of successive generations ending up in prisons. This is presently playing out in black communities in the United States and it is shocking to see this story told.

In addition to showcasing the toxic nexus between the war of drugs and expansion of the prison industry, the book explores why this issue is not on the public agenda in a thoughtful manner.

[Chanika R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drucker provides the answer we already know: prisons don't work. His genius, however, is that he treats imprisonment like an epidemic, diagnoses the problem, locates its source, and proposes solutions that would help eliminate the illness. Carefully researched and thorough, Drucker's work makes us think more deeply about the human rights violations occurring in the prison complex.

[Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprisingly approachable primer on both mass incarceration and epidemiology. I knew fairly little about both subjects (slightly more about the former than the latter), but it seems to present a unique angle on a huge problem, and doesn't forget the prescriptive and human elements amongst the tables and statistics.

[Sarah]

Just starting the book! An important addition to the fields of criminology, sociology and poltical science.

[John Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating perspective on the cycle of poverty and imprisionment as an epidemic

[Eliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excoriating account of the American prison system and a searing indictment of the racism endemic in the war on drugs.