The American incarceration rate has quintupled over the last generation, to the point where the United States now incarcerates over two million individuals. A wave of new empirical, sociological and legal scholarship has begun shed new light on the growth of mass incarceration. John Pfaff (Fordham) and Jonathan Simon (Berkeley) will discuss their groundbreaking research on the causes of mass incarceration, the response by the courts and proposals for reform going forward.