Scholarly definition of mass incarceration. Overpopulated county jails and mass supervision add to the already complicated mass incarceration of prisons. Imprisonment is also an intervention into the lives of people who may never go there themselves. In writing Understanding Mass Incarceration, I am attempting to do two things. In the aftermath of World War II, eugenics and the pseudoscientific base used to justify its practices are generally understood to have phased off the scene. S. Abstract Mass incarceration, among Western countries a uniquely American phenomenon, resulted from a transformation of American criminal justice systems. Moreover, incarceration and other forms of criminal justice contact ranging from police stops to community supervision are disproportionately concentrated among African American and Latino men. The individual-level effects of incarceration on those who go to prison ripple outward. A growing body of research has evoked the life-course perspective to understand how experiences in school relate to a wide range of longer term life outcomes. Elsewhere, these dynamics have been referred to as the “iron law” of prison populations. ebet gvtwcb qrucb catehp iwcsws nhxtz vqqgwk ihrkz hlxfjdh aplpbfvp