Book Review: V. Barker The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009. ix, 252 pp. $35.00. ISBN 0195370023

• Author: Monte Staton
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016810385200
• Published date: 01 June 2011
• Date: 01 June 2011
• Subject Matter: Articles

of a society allow such behavior and attitudes to construct normality and here is where restorative

justice may be of important value. If communities can meet in restorative justice forums and begin to

reshape the perceptual construction of ethical and unethical behavior in relation to violence against

women within such processes then the cultural ethical standards may begin to change shape and

form within the affected communities. By combining ideals, values, and goals of feminist organiza-

tions, grassroots organizations, political forces, cultural aspects, and restorative justice processes,

the authors contend transformative justice will hopefully be the much needed emerging result.

V. Barker

The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the

Way America Punishes Offenders New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.

ix, 252 pp. $35.00. ISBN 0195370023

Reviewed by: Monte Staton, Loyola University, Chicago, IL, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016810385200

Some of the most important research in U.S. prison studies focuses on explaining anddetermining

the long-termconsequences of the steep, nationwide rise in incarceration rates beginningin the 1970s.

In The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes

Offenders, Vanessa Barker explains that there has been a tendency in the research literature to focus

on the general, national trend of massive incarceration and downplay comparative research focusing

on the variability in imprisonment trends recognizable among states. Barker writes that at state level

American penal sanctioning is fragmented and sometimes contradictory, the result of both reactive

politics and long-term planning, and much more complicated than the general picture of increased

imprisonmentoften presented. She states that thepurpose of her book is to document and explain var-

iation in U.S. penal sanctioning, although the study presented is limited to three states: California,

Washington, and New York. These states are chosen in part because California has maintained high

rates of incarceration relative to other states, Washingtonhas maintained relatively lowimprisonment

rates, and New Yorkhas maintained moderate incarceration rates.Barker compares the ways in which

each of the three statesdeveloped its distinctive ‘‘penal regime,’’ a termshe uses to refer collectively to

the discourse on crime, conceptualizations of justice, the rationale for punishment, the character and

type of sanctions, and imprisonment rates present in a state.

According to Barker, the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s was a crucial time in the

development of the penal regimes of California, Washington, and New York. During this time of

widespread social unrest and change in America, the penal regimes of each of the three states began

to pursue a different strategy, each having long-term consequences recognizable today. In the late

1960s, each state faced a rise in crime, followed by an overload on their criminal justice systems

causing citizens and officials to question the rehabilitative ideal of imprisonment, which had been

in place for decades. Although one might expect that states would have responded to this situation

with similar policies, Barker reveals how the course taken by each state involved understandings of

crime and rationales for punishment, which were largely shaped by the character of political

structures and collective agency of ordinary people unique to each state. She explains that political

structures are the institutional and administrative organization of the state, and collective agency is

the mobilization of ordinary people in the policy-making process; taken together these two dimen-

sions form modes of governance. Barker claims that the subtle but crucial differences in political

institutions and democratic traditions among the states help explain variation in penal regimes.

Furthermore, she claims that penal regime change, continuity, and difference are significantly

218 Criminal Justice Review 36(2)