Invisible Punishment

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of “get tough on crime” attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and ’90s, a range of strategies, from “three strikes” and “a war on drugs,” to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrong-doers, but on their families and the communities they come from. This book looks at the consequences of these policies twenty years later.

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of ?get tough on crime" attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and '90s, a range of strategies, from ?three strikes" and ?a war on drugs," to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrong-doers, but on their families and the communities.

A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre. In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.

This groundbreaking book by an award-winning psychoanalyst and forensic psychiatrist presents a comprehensive exploration of a timely but often taboo topic: the failure of punishment to deter crime and violence, an issue that affects us both individually and as a culture. Written at the culmination of the author s fifty-year career as a psychoanalyst, forensic psychologist and scholar, this wide-ranging work identifies the origins of violence and investigates the surprising consequences of punishment from a multitude of perspectives. In his treatment of the topic, Dr. Dorpat utilizes scienti.

A revelatory account of the misdemeanor machine that unjustly brands millions of Americans as criminals. Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year. People arrested for minor crimes are swept through courts where defendants often lack lawyers, judges process cases in mere minutes, and nearly everyone pleads guilty. This misdemeanor machine starts punishing people long before they are convicted; it punishes the innocent; and it punishes conduct that never should have been a crime. As a result, vast numbers of Americans -- most of them poor and people of color -- are stigmatized as criminals, impoverished through fines and fees, and stripped of drivers' licenses, jobs, and housing. For too long, misdemeanors have been ignored. But they are crucial to understanding our punitive criminal system and our widening economic and racial divides. A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018

This book challenges the centrality of the prison in our understanding of punishment, inviting us to see, hear, imagine, analyse and restrain 'mass supervision'. Though rooted in social theory and social research, its innovative approach complements more conventional academic writing with photography, song-writing and storytelling.

“An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement” from the prisoners who have survived it (New York Review of Books). On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Now, in a book that will add a startling new dimension to the debates around human rights and prison reform, former and current prisoners describe the devastating effects of isolation on their minds and bodies, the solidarity expressed between individuals who live side by side for years without ever meeting one another face to face, the ever-present specters of madness and suicide, and the struggle to maintain hope and humanity. As Chelsea Manning wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read.” These firsthand accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts, exploring the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of solitary confinement. “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for twenty-three hours a day, for months, sometimes for years at a time? That is not going to make us safer. That’s not going to make us stronger.” —President Barack Obama “Elegant but harrowing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A potent cry of anguish from men and women buried way down in the hole.” —Kirkus Reviews

This book systematically defends an account of the institution of legal punishment that draws on both retributive and crime-prevention thinking. The work argues that legal punishment censures convicted offenders and thus morally communicates with them, any victims, and the broader community, while also serving to reduce future crime. The expressive or retributive element is assigned the lead role in this mixed account because it better captures the notion that members of society are to be held morally accountable for their failures to abide by defensible criminal prohibitions of various kinds. Despite this, it is conceded that the reduction of crime plays a vital role in justifying the institution of legal punishment and the book contains extended discussion of how and why this is so. Beyond its explication of the aims of legal punishment and their respective roles within a mixed theory, the study devotes separate chapters to sentencing, criminal procedure, and the imposition of fees and collateral legal consequences on individuals who have been convicted of crimes and fully served their sentences. In these ways, the work moves beyond discussion of the abstract aims of legal punishment to details of the institution’s internal structure and operations. The many historical deficiencies and failures of the institution are duly noted and the challenges they pose for punishment theorizing are examined. The book closes with discussion of the limited success of punishment institutions in apprehending, convicting, and punishing those who violate the law, including many who do so in serious ways. Alternatives to reliance on legal punishment institutions are briefly examined. In the end, retention of such institutions is urged although it is suggested that we ought to have modest expectations about their ultimate success. The work will be of interest to those working in the areas of Legal Philosophy and Criminology.