The Prison and the Gallows

The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-521-86427-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 466 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 905 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Criminology

Over the last three decades the United States has built a carceral state that is unprecedented among Western countries and in US history. Nearly one in 50 people, excluding children and the elderly, is incarcerated today, a rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. What are some of the main political forces that explain this unprecedented reliance on mass imprisonment? Throughout American history, crime and punishment have been central features of American political development. This book examines the development of four key movements that mediated the construction of the carceral state in important ways: the victims' movement, the women's movement, the prisoners' rights movement, and opponents of the death penalty. This book argues that punitive penal policies were forged by particular social movements and interest groups within the constraints of larger institutional structures and historical developments that distinguish the United States from other Western countries.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gottschalk, Marie

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. The prison and the gallows: the construction of the carceral state in America; 2. Law, order, and alternative explanations; 3. Unlocking the past: the nationalization and politicization of law and order; 4. The carceral state and the welfare state: the comparative politics of victims; 5. Not the usual suspects: feminists, women's groups, and the anti-rape movement; 6. The battered women's movement and the development of penal policy; 7. From rights to revolution: prison activism and penal policy; 8. Capital punishment, the courts, and the early origins of the carceral state, 1920s-1960s; 9. The power to punish: the political development of capital punishment, 1972 to today; 10. Conclusion: whither the carceral state.

Über Autor(innen)

Gottschalk, Marie
Marie Gottschalk is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a PhD in political science from Yale University and an MPA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She is the author of The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business, and the Politics of Health Care in the United States (Cornell University Press, 2000). She is a a former associate editor of World Policy Journal and a former associate director of the World Policy Institute in New York City.