Since the 1970s both the United States and many of the European countries have had a significantly increase in the prison population. Today United States has approximately 6.5 million people under criminal justice supervision. And the incarceration rate in the United States has grown from 176 in 1973 up to 700 in the year of 2000 (Professor Waquant 11/10/2010). In Europe, many of the countries have also experienced a similar disturbing development the last 25 years. Even though the development within Europe does indeed vary, the growth rates in many of these countries are considerably large. Nations such as Portugal, the Netherlands and Greece have had a 300% increase in the prison population during these period (Waquant 2009).

In effort of explaining the factors which are formerly the cause of these figures and trends Waquant (2009) base his arguments on the change from a social to a penal policy. As the neoliberal penal state as evolved, a significant increase in the incarceration rate has been the result, from earlier having rehabilitations ideals and a social policy supporting a welfare model to ending up with a society founded upon managerialism and privatization (Waquant 2009).

The penalization of poverty as Waquant (2009) refers to it, has been a direct response to the social insecurity which has occurred in many of the advanced societies since the post-Fordist era. The neoliberal policies has been changing the function of the state to a more deregulated role in both economic and social context, simultaneously adopting a stronger punitive function. Waquant (2009) draws from Bourdieu and describes this transformation as “the invisible hand of the market is joined by the iron fist of the penal state” (Waquant 2009). And that this is higly correlated with the withdrawal of the “Left hand s social welfare programs in the post-Fordist era. Ultimately, the neoliberal ideology has caused a higher fraction of the population being poor, as social protection has dismantled. Together with increased unemployment and a deskilled labor market, the state eventually uses penal institution to enforce order (Professor Waquant 10/11/2010). The prison as an institution has become an important tool to handle the social insecurity, and preserving the social order (Waquant 2009, 2001).

Further, Waquant (2009) identifies three independent causal series behind the incarceration increase in the United States especially. “Zero tolerance” measures on crime were one of the new ideology and policies which has emerged during the last three decades for the purpose of upholding law and order. Waquant (2001) specially highlights “neoconservative think tanks” such as the Manhatten Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute for taking an essential part in this task. “it is they who manufacture these notions before disseminating them within the American ruling class in the course of the war against the welfare state, which has been raging in the wake of the social and racial backlash experienced by America since the mid- 1970s” (Waquant 2001: P 405). This “de-autonomization” of the penal sector gave rise to the “crisscrossing” of the conservative and the libertarian critiques of criminal justice” (Waquant 2009).

Another factor Waquant (2009) argues has resulted in this hyper-incarceration is the important role of the rapidly growing politicization and mediatization of crime that have been taking place during this period. Both politicians and media have used criminality and the”war on crime” as a main tool in the proliferation of moral panic around criminality (Waquant 2009). This trend was initially a direct response against the modest expansion of the welfare state during the 1960s and the requirements of reducing poverty and racial inequality (Waquant 2005a).