When Dr. John Snow first traced an outbreak of cholera to a water pump in the Soho district of London in 1854, the field of epidemiology was born. This volume takes the same concepts and tools of public health that have successfully tracked epidemics of flu, tuberculosis, and AIDS to make the case that our current unprecedented level of imprisonment has become a plague upon our body politic that undermines the families and communities it targets, damaging the very social structures that prevent crime -- Publisher description.

An epidemiological riddle -- Cholera in London : the ghost maps of Dr. Snow -- AIDS : the epidemiology of a new disease -- A different kind of epidemic -- Anatomy of an outbreak : New York's Rockefeller drug laws and the prison pump -- Orders of magnitude : the relative impact of mass incarceration -- A self-sustaining epidemic : modes of reproduction -- Chronic incapacitation : the long tail of mass incarceration -- The contagion of punishment : collateral damage to children and families of prisoners -- Ending mass incarceration : a public health model -- Afterword to the paperback edition : the future of mass incarceration in America.