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The mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic in California's prisons stands out as the state's worst-ever medical catastrophe in a carceral setting. Fester offers a cultural history of this correctional disaster through first-person accounts, courtroom observations, policy documents, and years of carefully collected quantitative data. Bearing witness to the immense suffering wrought on people behind bars through dehumanization, fear, and ignorance, Fester explains how carceral cruelty also threatens the health and well-being of all Californians. This book stands as a monument to the brave coalition of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones, along with activists, doctors, journalists, and lawyers, who fought to shed light on one of the darkest times in the Golden State's correctional system.

The mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic in California's prisons stands out as the state's worst-ever medical catastrophe in a carceral setting. Fester offers a cultural history of this correctional disaster through first-person accounts, courtroom observations, policy documents, and years of carefully collected quantitative data. Bearing witness to the immense suffering wrought on people behind bars through dehumanization, fear, and ignorance, Fester explains how carceral cruelty also threatens the health and well-being of all Californians. This book stands as a monument to the brave coalition of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones, along with activists, doctors, journalists, and lawyers, who fought to shed light on one of the darkest times in the Golden State's correctional system

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- ONE. The California Parole Process -- TWO. The Manson Family Cases and the Birth of the "Extreme-Punishment Trifecta" -- THREE. The Triumph of Helter Skelter -- FOUR. Revisiting the Past -- FIVE. Reinventing the Present -- SIX. Reimagining the Future -- SEVEN. In Bardo -- Notes -- Index

After forty years of increasing prison construction and incarceration rates, winds of change are blowing through the American correctional system. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the unsustainability of the incarceration project, thereby empowering policy makers to reform punishment through fiscal prudence and austerity. In Cheap on Crime, Hadar Aviram draws on years of archival and journalistic research and builds on social history and economics literature to show the powerful impact of recession-era discourse on the death penalty, the war on drugs, incarceration practices, prison heal

In this Article I rely on the public policy concept of "policy transfer" to examine the impact of U.S. legislation, litigation, and politics on the Israeli criminal justice landscape. The Article identifies four eras: 1. The Great Light from the West - the ascent of U.S. criminal justice as British influence fades; 2. The Decade of Rights - a misperception of America as a paragon of criminal justice rights and protections that results in influences on Israeli jurisprudence; 3. The Law-and-Order Enchantment Period - a time at which Israeli scholars and policymakers import punitive trends from the U.S., particularly in the area of innovation in policing and victims' rights; and 4. The Era of Contention - a time at which Israeli scholars and policymakers bring with them critical perspectives on the U.S. and Israeli policy begins to question, and deviate from, its American counterpart. I conclude that changing patterns of elite networking can explain why Israel, initially in thrall to what it perceived as a paragon of civil rights, eventually parted ways with the U.S. as a source of influence: the emergence of a class of academics, public defenders, and policymakers educated in the U.S. and conversant in American criminological literature critical of the punitive turn and mass incarceration brought about informed critiques of the American model and led to a "sobering up" of the Israeli policymaking world. The Article proceeds to explain the relationship between the two countries through the framework of American Political Development. Following Malcolm Feeley's analysis, the Article finds that both countries – self-defining as "developed" – actually exhibit features of developing countries in the context of criminal justice: high levels of interpersonal violence and intolerance, a constant problem of police overreach, a legacy of racism and exclusion, high availability of weapons, and political corruption. This might explain Israel's fascination with American criminal justice not as an inspiration, but as cultural recognition of the similarities between the countries.

The California Criminal Justice Realignment is often seen as a sui generis penal experiment in response to a court mandate. However, when examined in a broader context, it can be understood as part of a recession-era institutional effort to reduce prison costs, fueled by a discourse of austerity and financial prudence, which I refer to as "humonetarian." This article examines Realignment, its predecessor, Senate Bill 18, and its successor, Proposition 47, as examples of humonetarian policy, characterized by a rhetoric of costs and savings; bipartisan support; inmate transference practices; and a focus on nonviolent, low-risk offenders, whose incarceration expenses exceed the risk they pose. The analysis yields two insights: one, the financial context of reform; and the other, the unique, neopopulist California "flavor" of this financial context, which stands in the way of even more effective reform. I end with thoughts about the promise and perils of humonetarianism in the California context.