Michael Fortner, the Pamela B. Gann Associate Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow, along with Cameron Stevens ’23, former student manager of the Rose Institute for State and Local Government, published a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Sentencing (Oxford University Press, 2026), which explores the monumental criminal justice system question, “whether and how to punish those convicted of crimes.” The chapter, titled “Race, Crime, and the Prison Buildup” and included in Part IV of the book, “Racial Disparities and Inequalities,” analyzes the origins of mass incarceration by tracing key federal and state sentencing policies and calls attention to both the actions of White political elites and the influence of Black political voices at critical moments in sentencing reform.