Comment Re: We know how, just don't want to. (Score 1) 149
Actually, no. That's really not it.
Up through especially the 60s and 70s, the American prison system was all about reform over punishment. It changed very quickly in the 80s and 90s and we started incarcerating wildly more people. The current state of the US prison system is far more a modern thing than people realize, it's not some fundamental American core, even as easy as it is to assume it is, as we say it's rooted in slavery and all. (It is, but not half as simply as a single sentence would say.)
Modern, two party American politics basically created this feedback loop starting at Nixon and peaking at Clinton where "tough on crime" was a whole platform.
Everyone should read the New Jim Crow, it's aging, but still very good. The first half is just a history that stays kind of evergreen.