(Abstract Only)

This paper examines the transition in Arizona's punishment policies and practices from the late 1970s through the 1980s, when the state developed into a national leader in penal harshness, both in breadth and style. I explore how the turmoil that characterized state penal institutions in the 1970s opened up the possibility for the mass incarceration boom of the subsequent two decades. Specifically, I examine how state actors--the governor, legislators, criminal justice personnel, and federal district judges--all worked to resolve the crises that dominated this period, and through such attempts tried to redefine the fundamental values and mission of the state's penal system. This crisis management mode, coupled with new legal demands on penal administrators and other outside forces, led to widespread skepticism about rehabilitation as an aim of penality and to subsequent calls to return to a more punitive approach. Thus the 1980s ushered a long period of ideological and operational stability, characterized by harshness and austerity toward penal subjects, that is exemplary of the contemporary penal state in many jurisdictions. The new regime was widely and enthusiastically accepted among the majority of the populace, within the legislature and in the executive branch, resulting in unprecedented levels of penal funding for building and operating new institutions, fueling the explosion of incarceration in the state.