This dissertation argues that mass incarceration in the United States occurred through a process of fragmented state-building. Institutional fragmentation both spurred the political will and critically enabled the bureaucratic capacity to imprison at a mass scale. By fragmentation, I mean both federalism (the division of authority among levels of government) and the separation of powers (the provision of independent political bases for different actors within a single level of government). The argument has three major parts. First, the local arena played a critical role in the rise of law-and-order politics, as fragmentation carved up the American polity in ways that amplified punitive impulses and muffled competing voices. Second, institutional fragmentation created a type of moral hazard by allowing actors with an interest in ramping up punishment to do so with little or no regard to the problem of prison crowding. When the crowding problem did become salient, it was in a crisis context that biased politicians toward underwriting mass imprisonment by building more cells. Third, prosecutors played a critical role in this fragmented state-building by out-organizing and out-lobbying rival actors in the criminal-justice system. Using archival documents and news accounts, the dissertation offers a detailed case study of these dynamics at work in Pennsylvania. It also examines the federal politics of criminal justice during the Reagan administration and the emergence of professional associations of prosecutors.
Advisors: Adam Sheingate and Steven Teles
Secondary readers: Angus Burgin, Meredith Greif, Robert Lieberman, Katrina McDonal
