Punishment in the American Democracy: The Paradoxes of Good Intentions (From Comparing Prison Systems: Toward a Comparative and International Penology, P 21-59, 1998, Robert P. Weiss, Nigel South, eds. - See NCJ-178009)

• NCJ Number: 178010
• Author(s): Dario Melossi; Mark Lettiere
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 39 pages
• Sale Source: Gordon and Breach Publishers
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Netherlands
• Note: International Studies in Global Change: Vol. 8

Annotation

This chapter reviews the American prison system from the century before independence to today.

Abstract

In 1682 William Penn called for a penal reform that abolished the death penalty for many crimes and tried to introduce a new punitive institution shaped after the Dutch workhouse. The concept of the workhouse, structured around a forced discipline of labor, was ultimately abandoned, but was rediscovered in the 19th century and became the basis for the new penitentiary institution. The chapter describes different efforts at reforming the American prison system and different attitudes toward the goals of imprisonment. However, despite those efforts, the current aim of imprisonment seems to be merely the warehousing of criminals. Society throws into jail larger and larger sections of its citizenry, which, in the case of urban African American males, is approximating social if not biologica genocide. References