In recent years, scholars and social movements have brought the issue of mass incarceration into public consciousness in the United States. Many now know that the U.S. has the world’s largest prison population, or have heard alarming figures, like an incarceration rate for Black men that is 6 times that for white men. At the

Professor Katherine Beckett, UWCHR Steering Committee member and faculty in the Departments of Sociology and Law, Societies, and Justice, has published a piece in The American Prospect, titled “Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Myth of Monstrosity.” The article draws on work related to the Rethinking Punishment initiative, led by Prof. Beckett and Prof. Steve Herbert. Prof. Beckett