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

• Date: 01 July 2012
• Published date: 01 July 2012
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368712448065
• Author: Jennifer Sumner
• Subject Matter: Book Review

Book Review

Ernest Drucker

A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America New York, NY: New Press,

2011. 226 pp. $26.95. ISBN 978-1-59558-497-7

Reviewed by: Jennifer Sumner, Penn State, Harrisburg, PA

DOI: 10.1177/2153368712448065

In the past decade, a thorough literature has developed on the causes and effects of

mass incarceration in the United States. Yet, in this work, Ernest Drucker addresses

these issues from an entirely different perspective likening mass incarceration to an

epidemic disease and, in doing so, providing a new understanding to a now

well-known and increasingly documented problem. The new understanding is a sig-

nificant contribution to the field especially in terms of the potential it has for making

even clearer—and more persuasive and urgent—the significant impact of mass

incarceration on individuals, communities, and families.

The book begins with ‘‘An Epidemiological Riddle’’ that sets the foundation for the

parallel that is the text’s centerpiece—that mass incarceration is a public health

problem. It is clear that an epidemiologist could solve the riddle in no time but a crime

and justice audience may not be so quick to get it, making it all the more compelling.

Drucker provides key information about an ‘‘unusual event,’’ and challenges the

reader to identify it. Social and demographic characteristics of individuals are directly

linked to physical location to show the ways in which these factors interact to affect

one’s likelihood of exposure to harm. Thus, the author creates as the foundation of this

work an analysis of individual and environmental characteristics and the intersection

between both in order to make sense of a large-scale problem and as a necessary pre-

decessor to its prevention. The book evolves through an initial analysis of an ‘‘actual’’

epidemic (cholera in London) as a template for using epidemiological analysis for the

problem of mass incarceration. The epidemiological novice is trained into understand-

ing how epidemiologists go about their work in understanding an epidemic disease—

in particular, the role of three key variables: time, person, and place (p. 17). The author

reviews John Snow’s analysis of cholera in London in the mid-19th century, which has

at its core geographical mapping of cases in addition to cataloguing case characteris-

tics—not unlike Park and Burgess’ social ecological study of crime in Chicago in the

1920s—in order to reveal information about what causes the disease (in this case a

pathogen carried in water transported through a particular pump).

The text thus begins with a historic example of using empirical evidence to

determine the causes, effects, and solutions to a public health problem and moves to

Race and Justice

2(3) 220-225

ªThe Author(s) 2012

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