Synopsis
In Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform, John Pfaff, a Fordham Law School professor with a background in economics, delivers a data-driven critique of the prevailing narratives surrounding mass incarceration in the United States. Published in 2017, the book challenges the widely accepted "Standard Story" popularized by works like Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which attributes the explosion of the U.S. prison population primarily to the War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, and the influence of private prisons. Pfaff argues that these explanations, while not entirely baseless, significantly overstate their impact and obscure the more complex, structural factors driving the nation’s incarceration rates, which have ballooned to the point where the U.S., with 5% of the world’s population, holds nearly 25% of its prisoners. Through meticulous statistical analysis, Pfaff seeks to reframe the conversation, emphasizing that meaningful reform requires confronting politically and socially challenging realities, particularly the incarceration of violent offenders.
Pfaff begins by dismantling the Standard Story’s core claims. He demonstrates that the War on Drugs, often portrayed as the primary driver of mass incarceration, accounts for a relatively small portion of the prison population. Only about 16% of state prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses, and of those, a mere 5-6% are low-level, nonviolent offenders. Instead, Pfaff highlights that the majority of inmates—roughly two-thirds—are serving time for violent crimes, such as murder, robbery, or assault. This challenges the narrative that prisons are filled with harmless drug users and suggests that reforms focused solely on drug laws will have limited impact. Similarly, Pfaff downplays the role of mandatory minimum sentences and longer prison terms, noting that while sentences in the U.S. are indeed longer than international norms, the actual time served has not increased dramatically since the 1980s. Instead, the surge in prison populations is driven by a higher rate of admissions, particularly for violent crimes, rather than extended sentences.
The book’s central argument points to a significant shift in prosecutor behavior as a key driver of mass incarceration. In the mid-1990s, prosecutors began filing felony charges against arrestees at roughly twice the rate they had previously, a change that Pfaff identifies as a critical turning point. This shift was not driven by federal policy or high-profile political figures but by local, grassroots-level decisions in the nation’s 3,000+ counties, where prosecutors operate with significant autonomy and little oversight. Pfaff describes prosecutors as "black boxes" in the criminal justice system, making discretionary decisions about charges and plea deals that profoundly impact incarceration rates. These decisions are influenced by a fractured system where counties send prisoners to state-funded prisons, creating a moral hazard: local prosecutors face no financial consequences for their aggressive charging practices, as the costs are borne by state budgets. This dynamic, coupled with public pressure for tough-on-crime policies, incentivizes over-incarceration, particularly for violent offenses.
Pfaff also critiques the focus on private prisons, which house only a small fraction of inmates, arguing that the "prison industrial complex" is less significant than the public sector’s role in perpetuating mass incarceration. He further notes that federal policies, while often highlighted in reform discussions, are less relevant than state and local policies, as state prisons hold the vast majority of inmates. The book underscores the social and economic costs of this system, including the disruption of families and communities, and argues that the current approach is an ineffective deterrent to crime. However, Pfaff acknowledges the political difficulty of his proposed solutions, which center on reducing the incarceration of violent offenders and shortening their sentences—a stance that clashes with public and political emphasis on "public safety." He suggests reforms like regulating prosecutorial discretion, better funding public defenders, and addressing the financial incentives that encourage over-incarceration, but he warns that these measures require a shift in public perception about punishment and safety.
Ultimately, Locked In is both a critique and a call to action. Pfaff positions himself as a reformer but argues that the reform movement has been misguided by emotionally compelling but statistically inaccurate narratives. He urges a more nuanced approach, one that grapples with the uncomfortable reality that addressing mass incarceration means rethinking how society punishes violent crime. While acknowledging the racial disparities in the system and the cultural impact of the War on Drugs, Pfaff insists that these are not the primary drivers of prison growth. His data-driven analysis, praised for its rigor and clarity, challenges reformers to focus on local-level policies and prosecutorial power while cautioning against oversimplified solutions. The book has been lauded as a vital contribution to the criminal justice reform debate, though some critics argue that Pfaff’s emphasis on technical fixes underestimates the role of broader social movements, like Black Lives Matter, in shifting public attitudes toward incarceration.