Re: Never mind--free PDF download!

Good stuff so far:

Criminologist Elliott Currie observes that "[m]ass incarceration has deepened the historic gaps in life chances between affluent and poor, white and black, and created a vast army of the socially and economically disabled: it fruitlessly sucks up billions of dollars, year after year."(4) In other words, overciminalization is not only resulting in more crime, but it is also contributing to the deterioration of society making it likely crime rates will increase even more.

Beginning in the 1970's, a conservative movement emerged at the forefront of criminal justice promoting overcriminalization.(5) The push in favor of overcriminalization has emerged as "one of the largest experiments in social engineering ever undertaken in the United States."(6) Jock Young, a British criminologist, has studied this conservative approach and characterized its failures as a crisis of penality.(7)

Repressive control systems tend to incentivize, either economically, politically, or otherwise, the prosecution and punishment of deviance.(16) On the other hand, criminal laws in a restrained system are more effective because they are narrowly tailored and paired with strong protections of individual rights.(17) Additionally, the prosecution and punishment of deviance is not incentivized under a restrained societal system. Therefore, under repressive control systems the number of deviants is greater as is the incidence of punishment; that is, repressive control systems result in a greater number of criminals and a higher rate of crime.(18)

And do on. Well worth reading, I think.