KEVIN B. SMITH has been studying and teaching state politics and policy for more than twenty years. He has authored or co-authored nine books, including Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences. Prior to life in academia, he covered state and local politics as a newspaper reporter. Smith is the Leland and Dorothy H. Olson Chair of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His new book is The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America.