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In the 1950s, punishment became much more of a political topic in the United States, and this is one of the 
issues that started this section, our perceptions of the fear of crime. Lawmakers, justicians, and others began 
to campaign with their toughness on crime, using the fear of crime and the criminal element to benefit 
their agendas. One of the examples of being tough on crime was the use of long periods of incarceration 
in general. This could be considered as collective incapacitation, or the incarceration of large groups of 
individuals to remove their ability to commit crimes for a set amount of time in the future. 
Since this time, and most greatly exacerbated in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been the increasing use of 
punishment by prison sentences. Thus, we saw rapid growth in the prison population in the United States. 
The ‘politicization of punishment’ increased the overall prisoner levels in two ways.   First, by changing the 
views toward the discretion allowed to decision makers, we have gotten tougher on crime. In turn, more 
people are being sentenced to prison that may have otherwise gone to a specialized probation or community 
sanction alternatives. Second, these same attitudes have led to harsher and lengthier punishments for certain 
crimes. Offenders are being sent away for longer sentences, which has caused the intake-to-release ratio to 
change, causing enormous buildups of the prison population. 
The incapacitative ideology followed this design for several decades. In the early 1990s, policies were 
implemented that would target individuals more specifically. These would come to be known as “three-
strikes” policies. These policies would incarcerate an individual for greater lengths of time, based on prior 
Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System
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