The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. By Marie Gottschalk. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 466p. $75.00 cloth, $28.99 paper.

Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. By Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 384p. $29.95.

Punishment and Inequality in America. By Bruce Western. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006. 224p. $29.95.

The American penal system has acquired an alarming rap sheet: Incarceration rates more than quadrupled from 1970 to 2005; African Americans are seven times more likely to be incarcerated than whites; more than five million Americans are barred from voting because of a felony conviction; and the United States incarcerates a greater proportion of its citizens than any nation in the world. Each of the three books reviewed here begins with some incantation of these daunting statistics, and from there they grapple with questions of the political causes and consequences of mass incarceration. What drives the contemporary prison boom, and how does mass incarceration in turn influence the distribution of political power, the mobilization of interest groups, and the citizenship of all those living under the ever-expanding criminal justice net?