While society had better options, the Boomers favored ever-stricter laws and processed ever more people into the prison system, the spectacle of law and order always being more satisfying to Boomer psychology than any reality of justice or efficacy. While Reagan often gets the blame for the rise of imprisonment, it was Boomers who (frequently in bipartisan accord) passed the most odious laws and Boomer administrations that presided over the most spectacular and fruitless phases of mass incarceration.
