Trading Democracy for Justice
Criminal Convictions and the Decline of Neighborhood Political Participation
240 pages
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11 halftones, 50 line drawings, 22 tables
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6 x 9
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© 2013
The United States imprisons far more people, total and per capita, and at a higher rate than any other country in the world. Among the more than 1.5 million Americans currently incarcerated, minorities and the poor are disproportionately represented. What’s more, they tend to come from just a few of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country. While the political costs of this phenomenon remain poorly understood, it’s become increasingly clear that the effects of this mass incarceration are much more pervasive than previously thought, extending beyond those imprisoned to the neighbors, family, and friends left behind.
For Trading Democracy for Justice, Traci Burch has drawn on data from neighborhoods with imprisonment rates up to fourteen times the national average to chart demographic features that include information about imprisonment, probation, and parole, as well as voter turnout and volunteerism. She presents powerful evidence that living in a high-imprisonment neighborhood significantly decreases political participation. Similarly, people living in these neighborhoods are less likely to engage with their communities through volunteer work. What results is the demobilization of entire neighborhoods and the creation of vast inequalities—even among those not directly affected by the criminal justice system.
The first book to demonstrate the ways in which the institutional effects of imprisonment undermine already disadvantaged communities, Trading Democracy for Justice speaks to issues at the heart of democracy.
Katherine Cramer-Walsh, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“Traci Burch has tackled a public issue that threatens the very basis of democracy—the tendency of criminal convictions to taint the democratic involvement of those left behind—and done so in rigorous and creative ways. Trading Democracy for Justice is a splendid work of social science that will be widely read and cited and whose astonishing findings will expand our attention to the ways incarceration affects people beyond those convicted of crimes.”
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Political Science: American Government and Politics | Race and Politics
Sociology: Criminology, Delinquency, Social Control | Social Change, Social Movements, Political Sociology
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