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The United States imprisons more of its people than any nation on Earth, and by a considerable margin. Criminals attract little empathy and have no political capital. Consequently, it is not surprising that, over the past forty years, there have been no concerted or unified efforts to stem the rapid increase in incarceration levels in the United States. Nevertheless, there has recently been a growing realization that even the world's biggest economy cannot readily sustain the $80 billion annual cost of imprisoning more than two million of its citizens. No principled, wide-ranging solution has yet been advanced, however. To resolve the crisis, this Article proposes a major revolution to the prison sector that would see technology, for the first time, pervasively incorporated into the punishment of criminals and result in the closure of nearly all prisons in the United States. The alternative to prison that we propose involves the fusion of three technological systems. First, offenders would be required to wear electronic ankle bracelets that monitor their location and ensure they do not move outside of the geographical areas to which they would be confined. Second, prisoners would be compelled to wear sensors so that unlawful or suspicious activity could be monitored remotely by computers. Third, conducted energy devices would be used remotely to immobilize prisoners who attempt to escape their areas of confinement or commit other crimes. The integrated systems described in this Article could lead to the closure of more than 95% of prisons in the United States. We demonstrate that the technological and surveillance devices can achieve all of the appropriate objectives of imprisonment, including the imposition of proportionate punishment and community protection. In our proposal, only offenders who have committed capital offenses or equivalent crimes, or who attempt to escape from technological custody, would remain in conventional brick-and-mortar prisons. As a result, our proposal would convert prisons from a ...

Intro -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction: Why Can't Life Be Fun? -- Level 1: Getting into the Game: An Introduction to Gamification -- Level 2: Game Thinking: Learning to Think Like a Game Designer -- Level 3: Why Games Work: The Rules of Motivation -- Level 4: The Gamification Toolkit: Game Elements -- Level 5: Game Changer: Six Steps to Gamification -- Level 6: Epic Fails: And How to Avoid Them -- Endgame: In Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Glossary -- Additional Resources -- About the Authors -- About Wharton School Press -- About the Wharton School.

The United States is finally recoiling from the mass incarceration crisis that has plagued it for half a century. The world's largest incarcerator has seen a small drop in prison numbers since 2008. However, the rate of decline is so slow that it would take half a century for incarceration numbers to reduce to historical levels. Further, the drop in prison numbers has occurred against the backdrop of piecemeal reforms, and there is no meaningful, systematic mechanism to reduce incarceration levels. Despite this, there is now, for the first time, a growing public acceptance that prison is a problematic, possibly flawed, sanction. Prison is expensive, inflicts serious unintended suffering on incarcerated people, and profoundly damages families. Alternatives to prison are finally being canvassed. In one respect this is not surprising. The way that we deal with serious offenders has not meaningfully changed for more than 500 years—during all this time, we have simply locked offenders behind high walls. The way we deal with people who have caused serious harm has been more resistant to scientific and technological advances than any other aspect of society. The most radical suggestion regarding prison reform is to abolish prisons. Prison abolition has been a theme in some limited academic quarters for many decades. It had never received anything approaching mainstream credibility as a reform option, but this is now changing. Prominent politicians, social groups, university organizations, and mainstream media commentaries have recently advocated prison abolition. This proposal is no longer a fringe idea. It has gained considerable currency, particularly in light of the dual society-changing phenomena of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, the persuasiveness of the proposal to abolish prison evaporates when any degree of intellectual rigor is cast over it. It is likely to go down as naïve idealism due to the absence of any practical alternatives to prison. This Article shores up the notion of ...