Berkeley

Book by UC Berkeley Professor Puts “Mass Incarceration on Trial”

Published

12 years ago

July 17, 2014

By Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. It has come down a sliver over the past six years: the all-time peak rate was in 2008, with 754 prisoners per 100,000 population.

As of 2013, that figure had fallen to 716, but the U.S. has retained its carceral supremacy, even so. While home to roughly 5 percent of the global population, it holds 25 percent of the world’s inmates.

And the recent decline in the rate of incarceration – down 3 percent, across 5 years – looks especially underwhelming in the context of the last few decades.

The rate of imprisonment held fairly steady in the U.S. between 1925 and 1975, apart from a modest and not too surprising increase for a while in the late 1930s. It then grows an astonishing 500 percent between 1975 and 2000, before starting to slow down (but still to grow!) in the early years of the new millennium.

Growth of that kind doesn’t just happen, somehow, through the operation of blind forces. Prisons exist, operate, and expand according to decisions that some people make — and that most of the rest of us acquiesce in, if only through the luxury of not paying that much attention.

In his new book Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America (New Press), Jonathan Simon fits the numbers into a frame that renders them disturbingly intelligible. In journal articles and a previous monograph, Simon, who is a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, has argued that the metaphor of a “war on crime” has become entirely too central to public life in the United States.

Besides pervasive surveillance cameras, unrelentingly sensational mass media (“if it bleeds, it leads”), political candidates uniformly vowing to be “tough on crime,” and an essentially militarized police presence in some urban neighborhoods, we have gotten used to a prison-construction boom with economic effects described in a report prepared for Congress four years ago:

“About 770,000 people worked in the corrections sector in 2008. The U.S. Labor Department expects the number of guards, supervisors, and other staff to grow by 9 percent between 2008 and 2018, while the number of probation and parole officers is to increase by 16 percent.

In addition to those working directly in institutions, many more jobs are tied to a multi-billion dollar private industry that constructs, finances, equips, and provides health care, education, food, rehabilitation and other services to prisons and jails. By comparison, in 2008 there were 880,000 workers in the entire U.S. auto manufacturing sector.”

Simon does not refer to those numbers, but they tend to confirm his larger point that long-term, mass incarceration has become routinized and integrated into the routine functioning of American society — in a way that it simply was not, say, forty years ago.

Simon depicts the earlier penal system as combining the carrot of “rehabilitation’s promise to treat and release most offenders, paroling those with good prospects for going straight” with the stick of “imposing long prison sentences on the incorrigible.”

This strategy of “selective incapacitation” (identifying the irreformable worst of convicted criminals and neutralizing their threat by removing them from society) required the practice of a certain amount of discretion and expertise on the part of the authorities.

High crime rates in the 1970s and early 1980s — combined with a punitive spirit fostered by “get-tough” politicians, not to mention a popular culture well-stocked with both brutal villains and righteous vigilantes – created fertile ground for what Simon calls “total incapacitation.”

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UC Berkeley Named Top Public University in the U.S. and No. 7 in the World by ‘U.S. News’

Berkeley has been consistently awarded the distinction of the U.S.’s top public university since the Best Global Universities list was first published in 2014. “A strong position in the Best Global Universities rankings recognizes a school’s profound commitment to world-class research and cross-border academic excellence,” said LaMont Jones, managing editor for education at U.S. News.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley.

The 2026 Best Global Universities rankings evaluated 2,250 research institutions from more than 100 countries

By Lila Thulin

U.S. News & World Report has ranked UC Berkeley No. 7 in its 2026 list of the best global universities, which assesses more than 2,250 research institutions worldwide.

Berkeley also claimed the honor of top public university in the U.S.

Released on Monday, the list evaluates universities from more than 100 countries on 13 metrics such as global and research reputation (as reported by academics and peers) and number of highly cited scholarly papers.

Berkeley has been consistently awarded the distinction of the U.S.’s top public university since the Best Global Universities list was first published in 2014.

“A strong position in the Best Global Universities rankings recognizes a school’s profound commitment to world-class research and cross-border academic excellence,” said LaMont Jones, managing editor for education at U.S. News.

The rankings also assess a university’s strength in various subject areas; these assessments are separate from U.S. News’ 2026 Best Graduate Programs rankings released in April.

This year, Berkeley was named in the top three nationally in seven subject areas – environment/ecology, ecology, water resources, physics, computer science, chemistry, and engineering – and in the top five for a total of 17 subjects. Subject rankings are based heavily on scholarly publications and citations as well as reputation.

In September, U.S. News also released its 2026 Best Colleges list, in which Berkeley was also named the No. 1 public institution among American universities.

That honor joins other accolades judging campus to be the best public university in the country, such as those from Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education.

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Arts and Culture

Farwest Region Deltas Celebrate Centennial With “September Breakfast” Honoring Vivian Osborne Marsh

The region was established in 1925 under the leadership of Vivian Osborne Marsh, who became its first Regional Director. Marsh was a pioneering scholar and civic leader, earning recognition as the first Black woman to receive both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in anthropology from UC Berkeley.

Published

10 months ago

September 14, 2025

Oakland Post

Farwest Regional Director, Kimberly Usher, Mayor Barbara Lee, US Representative Lateefah Simon, and Farwest Regional Representative, Radiya Ajibade. Photo courtesy of Farwest Regional Photographer Vicki P. Love.

By Antoinette Porter

Hundreds of members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and their guests gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union at the University of California, Berkeley, to mark the 100th anniversary of the sorority’s Farwest Region.

Marsh went on to serve as Delta Sigma Theta’s 7th National President, where she launched the sorority’s National Library Project to expand access to books in underserved Black communities in the South. During her presidency, the organization also became a prominent voice in the civil rights movement, lobbying Congress to pass anti-lynching legislation.

Bak in the Bay Area, Marsh devoted her career to advancing educational opportunities, mentoring young people, and strengthening community life. That commitment continues to shape the region, which supports initiatives in education, social justice, and economic development. Current projects include raising scholarship funds for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, voter education campaigns, and health and wellness programs.

A century after its founding, the Farwest Region of Delta Sigma Theta remains active across California and other western states, carrying forward Marsh’s vision of service and advocacy.

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Arts and Culture

Cal Performances Presents Angélique Kidjo & Yo-Yo Ma in Sarabande Africaine at UC Berkeley Greek Theatre on Aug. 30

On Saturday, Aug. 30, the pair will debut the Bay Area premiere of Sarabande Africaine, joined by pianist Thierry Vaton, percussionist David Donatien, and special guest Sinkane. The program illuminates centuries of musical interplay between African traditions and Western classical forms, using the Baroque sarabande dance, and its African ancestor, the Congolese spirit dance Zarabanda, as a gateway to exploring the deep, interconnected roots of global music.

Published

10 months ago

August 25, 2025

Oakland Post

Angelique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma. Wikimedia photos.

By Carla Thomas

On Labor Day weekend two of the world’s most celebrated musicians and cultural ambassadors, Grammy Award–winning vocalist Angélique Kidjo and legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma join forces for an evening of music, history, and cultural dialogue at UC Berkeley’s historic Hearst Greek Theatre.

Both Kidjo and Ma have built careers not only as great performers but as passionate advocates for cultural understanding. Sarabande Africaine is as much a conversation about shared heritage as it is a musical performance, blending genres, geographies, and histories.

“Every day there are moments when all of us can feel we are on the inside of something and also when we feel we are on the outside of something,” said Yo-Yo Ma. “To be able to understand both at the same time and oscillate between the two gives us a larger perspective on the world.”

“If your mind is open, and there is no fear, it’s easier to listen, and to question yourself,” said Kidjo.

The upcoming performance is presented within Cal Performances’ Illuminations: “Exile & Sanctuary” series for the 2025–26 season. The production explores exile as more than just physical displacement, but a disruption in identity and belonging, while sanctuary represents both refuge and the creative space where new connections and communities can take shape.

Cal Performances’ Illuminations bridges performances with UC Berkeley’s academic research, pairing the arts with conversations about urgent global issues.

Kidjo’s continued partnership with Cal Performances includes her 2021–22 artist-in-residence, premiering her music-theater work Yemandja, set in 19th-century West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade.

She also participated in the Bias in Our Algorithms and Society panel alongside campus leaders like Jennifer Chayes, and joined the Black Studies Collaboratory for a dialogue on music, diaspora, and the world.

She has since returned to Berkeley for multiple performances, most recently in 2024 at Zellerbach Hall.

Yo-Yo Ma’s history with Cal Performances spans decades, beginning in 1997. One notable project includes the 2018 performance of Bach’s complete cello suites at the Greek Theatre, a testament to his devotion to creating “transformative concert experiences in iconic spaces.”

For tickets and more information, visit calperformances.org.