Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration
Author: Lauren-Brooke Eisen
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2024. 392 pages.
Reviewer: Mia Thomaidou | Winter 2025
In Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration, Lauren-Brooke Eisen presents a thought-provoking exploration of the history, current landscape, and potential future of the U.S. penal system. This meticulously crafted book compiles a series of well-informed arguments that delve into how the American justice system’s lack of protective safeguards has led to a climate of punitive excess. Eisen effectively highlights the urgent need for reform, grounding her insights in an extensive, impressive, and impactful range of expert contributions and personal testimonies.
The book’s first section opens a historical overview of crime and punishment in America, grounding the reader in the roots of the issues explored throughout. The final section closes on an optimistic note, drawing on lessons from earlier chapters to propose practical solutions that aim to pave the way for a fairer and more effective criminal justice system. In the intervening parts, a diverse array of authors offers essays that include commentaries, personal reflections, first-hand accounts from within the system, and analyses of research, law, and policy. Across 38 chapters, 45 contributors—including prosecutors, attorneys, advocates, journalists, academics, founders and professionals in community organizations, currently and formerly incarcerated individuals, and the book’s editor, Lauren-Brooke Eisen—lend their voices. Eisen, a former prosecutor and current senior director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, assembles this remarkable group, resulting in a rich constellation of perspectives. From personal accounts inside prison walls to insights from acclaimed scholars, the book presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the justice system, making it a unique and compelling read.
The book’s introduction describes and operationalizes the problem at hand: The detrimental effects stemming from a deep-rooted impulse to punish people in excess, in ways that are, in practice, neither proportionate nor effective. The editor, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, prepares the reader for a detailed journey through the machinery of the criminal-legal system and its failure to deliver justice. The book then opens with a historical overview of crime and punishment in America, tracing how these systems have evolved and, at times, devolved. Part 1 explores the ways in which current approaches to addressing violent crime are not only ineffective but often counterproductive, offering alternatives that underscore the fallacy of punishment as a means of restoring justice. This section powerfully challenges the notion that victims benefit from excessive punishment or mass incarceration, framing these measures as socially, practically, and morally flawed.
In Part 2, the book examines the impact of federal funding on the justice system, presenting a nuanced view of how federal policies can either perpetuate injustice or serve as instruments for positive change. Eisen includes her own analysis, detailing how federal support for police expansion, prison construction, and punitive responses to crime has helped shape the modern state of mass incarceration. Significantly, this section dispels the assumption that these policies stem solely from partisan agendas or malicious intent, pointing instead to costly policy missteps, as evidenced by former President Clinton’s acknowledgment of the harms wrought by the 1994 Crime Bill.
Part 3 addresses the intricacies of court processes, prosecution, and sentencing, calling for an end to mandatory minimums in favor of more individualized, humane sentencing. This section suggests that while such proposals are not new, recent developments in criminology and policy may enable more informed and effective models of individualized sentencing.
Racism is an inevitable and recurring theme throughout the book, with Part 4 providing a dedicated examination of how racial biases contribute to punitive excess. This section delivers a powerful critique of systemic discrimination within the justice system, illustrating the profound and enduring impacts of these biases.
Part 5 takes readers inside America’s prisons, offering a raw and unfiltered look at the conditions endured by those incarcerated. This section, perhaps the book’s most harrowing, features first-hand accounts that capture the brutal realities of prison life, where individuals lose not only their freedom but often their dignity and health. By drawing back the curtain on the human cost of incarceration, this part of the book serves as a sobering reminder of the dehumanizing effects of excessive punishment.
In Part 6, the focus shifts to pathways for prison reform, presenting case studies from Europe to demonstrate that alternative approaches are both feasible and effective. This section champions a vision of reform grounded in empathy and rehabilitation, showing that transformative change is not only possible but already implemented elsewhere.
Youth punishment is the focus of Part 7, where the authors address the compounded impacts of social and racial inequalities on young individuals within the justice system. Here, we find an urgent call to treat children as children, rejecting the punitive impulse that often leads to lifelong sentences for youths who are entirely capable of rehabilitation. This section is particularly compelling in its argument that the justice system’s treatment of young people reveals the urgency for comprehensive reform.
Part 8 offers a thorough examination of the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, making a compelling case for why reform is both safe and essential. This section details the economic and social toll of punitive policies, highlighting how, despite their intentions, these measures have led to significant collateral damage with little benefit in terms of crime control.
The book concludes on an optimistic note in Part 9, focusing on redemption and the possibility of a more compassionate future for the U.S. justice system. Drawing on both Christian principles of forgiveness and practical proposals for educational reform, these chapters suggest that a more humane approach is within reach. This final section not only offers hope but also presents actionable paths forward, underscoring that criminal justice reform can be both principled and pragmatic.
Across its nine sections and 38 chapters, Excessive Punishment showcases an extraordinary array of perspectives from prosecutors, advocates, academics, journalists, and those directly impacted by the justice system. The book’s breadth of interdisciplinary expertise and personal experience paints a vivid picture of a system in need of change. Eisen has curated a conversation that is not only intellectually stimulating but also deeply humane, capturing the voices of those who understand both the failures of the system and the possibilities for reform.
Ultimately, Excessive Punishment serves as both a critique of the current penal system and a call to action. The book advocates for a shift away from punitive excess towards a justice system that recognizes and addresses the root causes of crime. It argues that punishment becomes redundant when societal and systemic issues are properly addressed, transforming this work into a powerful appeal for change. For anyone invested in understanding the intricacies of the justice system and the case for reform, this book is an essential, enlightening, and profoundly moving read.
Mia Thomaidou is a Neuroscience & Society Fellow at the Dana Foundation.
