What led to the massive rise in incarceration in America over the last 40 years? “Demonizing” individuals and groups is a classic psychological strategy to motivate one population to discriminate, hate, commit violence toward, and even to annihilate an “out group.” With nearly four decades of failure to fund mental health care and substance abuse treatment, America’s jails and prisons have become the default solution to these and other social ills. Despite evidence that punishment of this kind does not work, incarceration in all its forms are garnering a greater than ever portion of resources.

In this 8 credit, two-quarter program, we will examine fundamental psychological research underlying social cognition, stereotypes, prejudice, attitude formation and change, and self-deception and self-justification, as well as the roles and practices of politics, the justice system, and media in “belief transmission” to uncover the foundations of social stratification, covert and overt classism and racism, mandatory minimum sentencing, the privatization of prisons, the uses of solitary confinement, as well as the new threat of hyper-militarized police practices, weapons and tactics. Additionally, we will identify evidence-based practices that look to resolve these issues using a different lens (early education, adequate mental health care and drug treatment, restorative justice, positive psychology, etc.). We will call on leaders and participants from all of these arenas to help us examine the critical questions and potential answers in addressing this growing identification of the U.S. as a “prison nation”.

This program is relevant for careers in psychology, media and journalism, government, criminal justice, law enforcement, social services, education, law. Credits will be awarded in psychology and journalism.