Preface<br > "Don t look back，" Satchel Paige advised， "something might be<br >gaining on you." Yet， of necessity， this book regards the future by<br >looking over its shoulder at the past. In any consideration of the social<br >institution of imprisonment--especially in any attempt to change<br >it--the weight of history must be placed in the balance. The recent<br >excellent works of David Rothman， Michel Foucault， and Michael<br >Ignatieff have confirmed the importance of a historical perspective on<br >any era s policy prescriptions.<br > This is， however， explicitly a policy book. In Chapter 5， the<br >analysis of the past is allowed to inform some recommendations<br >which mesh liberal and conservative views. Although in some cases<br >we have been driven back to original sources， this is not a work of<br >primary social history in which lessons are inferred from a mass of<br >detail. Ours is an idiosyncratic view of the constraints imposed by<br >traditions on future choices， and its policy lessons are not shared by<br >many of the historians on whose work we have tried to build.<br > The genesis of the book may help to explain another of its features.<br > In 1977--80， the first author participated in a major study (commis-<br > sioned by the U.S. Department of Justice) of the American correc-<br > tional system. The central task was to advise the Congress， through<br > the agency， of the present and future needs of the country s prisons<br > and jails. The legislators， it seems， believed initially that the long-<br > term future of the system was something that could be forecasted or<br > projected with confidence. On the surface， this may seem a sensible<br > goal. Yet as some of the researchers argued at the time and as this<br > book maintains， this is not the way to approach the problem. To<br > convert a policy analysis into a mechanical forecasting exercise is not<br > only impossible in any respectable professional way， it is potentially<br > dangerous.<br > Some of the dangers are addressed below， and others are examined<br > by Kenneth Carlson in the project s report， American Prisons and<br > Jails. Here we simply note that a great deal of correctional policy is<br > currently made by this misguided reliance on forecasting the demand<br > of an inexorable prison pol~ulation and meeting it with a supply of<br >1X<br ><br >