Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0002-0424-0397

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Government

Reader 1

Michael Fortner

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Evan J Sevaly

Abstract

In this thesis, I develop a model to answer four questions about US incarceration: why did incarceration increase between 1973 to 2009, why have incarceration figures experienced an overall decrease since then, and what explains their oscillation, why has the penal system consistently incarcerated marginalized groups at disproportionate rates, and why is the US an incarceration outlier compared to other industrialized countries? I split the competing explanations to these questions into four schools of thought: the perspective that neoliberalism caused mass incarceration, the perspective that surpluses in finance capital, land, population, and state capacity caused mass incarceration, the perspective that penal populism and a culture of control caused mass incarceration, and the perspective that mass incarceration is caused by racism. In this thesis, I argue that ideas from all four schools of thought are necessary to develop an adequate model of mass incarceration. I use multiple linear regression tests and qualitative reasoning to synthesize the four schools of thought into one framework. I explain the structural conditions in the US that existed both before and during the rise in US incarceration rates. The two most important structural conditions were racism, which permeates the capitalist economy and the American state, and the political structure of the US, which allows for the passage of punitive policies. These baseline conditions were catalysts, which, combined with the variables of neoliberalism, deindustrialization and the creation of new surpluses, and increased crime and punitive media news coverage, created mass incarceration. Having developed a model for explaining mass incarceration, I briefly discuss its implications for how mass incarceration should be combated. In short, mass incarceration can only be defeated by ending the root problems that caused its rise.

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