Bookshelf: Moving beyond mass incarceration

START HERE: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration
by Greg Berman & Julian Adler

Kirkus Review =  A clearly written, optimistic road map for moving beyond mass incarceration. Berman and Adler are directors at the Center for Court Innovation, a think tank that “has created a broad range of alternative-to-incarceration and crime prevention programs in the New York area.” Their thesis is that such finely grained responses can change the ongoing narrative of racially discriminatory penalties, which have led to the current crisis in overimprisonment. 

They argue their focus in this book is not theoretical but relies on “real-life reforms that state and local policymakers and practitioners can make in the here and now to reduce our reliance on incarceration.” These are expressed in eight brief, punchy chapters, each built around an opening graph or statistic—e.g., a breakdown of who is behind bars or distinctions between high- and low-risk offenders. T