The Death Penalty and Mass Incarceration: Convergences and Divergences

American penal policy over the past forty years is striking in its departure both from the policies of their own recent past and from those of their peer nations. The authors' goal is to explore in more fine-grained detail of the convergences, divergences, and interactions of the death penalty and mass incarceration over the past several decades. They first address the convergences, identifying the common political background conditions and mutually reinforcing policies that promoted both the enthusiastic retention of the death penalty and the surge of the incarceration rate from the 1970s onward. They then discuss the divergences, both as a matter of practices on the ground and at the conceptual and constitutional levels. Finally, they turn their attention to the future, imagining possible routes to nationwide abolition of the death penalty and the likely impact on incarceration and the broader criminal justice system.