Leaving mass incarceration

Comments on Mona Lynch's "Mass incarceration, legal change and locale: Understanding and remediating American penal overindulgence" (2011). Lynch asserts that the emphasis on national-level data and explanations has produced an overly homogenized account of mass incarceration. Consequently, remedial policies based on this account alone might miss the intended mark. Policies that reduce reliance on incarceration need to be, in Lynch's words, "multiple, varied, and smaller in scope." My given task for this essay is to expound on these policies, which Lynch alternately terms "pathways out of mass incarceration" or "lessons relevant to policy reform." The pathways she identifies operate at the local and state level and constitute a two-pronged approach to facilitating change -- a change that incidentally is already underway. Adapted from the source document.