scholarly journals Leaving the Shining City on a Hill: A Plea for Rediscovering Comparative Criminal Justice Policy in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 105756772098162
Author(s):  
Alessandro Corda ◽  
Rhys Hester
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Justice Policy ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Reform Initiatives ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Phase ◽  
Policies And Practices

Over the past several decades, American penal exceptionalism—the tendency for U.S. penal policies and practices to proudly diverge from those of other Western countries—has severely limited the development of comparative criminal justice research from a U.S. perspective. However, in recent years, a growing consensus that America’s criminal justice policies and practices are too expensive, ineffective, excessively punitive, and often inhumane has laid the ground for a new phase of soul-searching. This article argues for an explicit rediscovering of comparative criminal justice policy in America, which would prove extremely helpful in providing bold yet practicable solutions in the current commendable but unimaginative era of criminal justice reform. We first contend that American exceptionalism is not as embedded in U.S. penal policy and culture as the past few decades might seem to suggest. Second, we discuss the main causes of the gradual demise of the comparative criminal justice enterprise in America. Finally, we discuss two areas of U.S. criminal justice reform suggesting mechanisms of comparative criminal justice policy that should be nurtured: (1) new prison reform initiatives pointing to renewed openness to comparative insights and (2) the growing chorus calling for prosecutorial reform, showing how many of the reform ideas proffered tap into characteristics found in continental systems.

Norfolk’s “Model Prison Community”: Howard Belding Gill and the Social Process of Prison Reform

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
Matthew DelSesto
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Spatial Design ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Prison Community ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores the social process of criminal justice reform, from Howard Belding Gill’s 1927 appointment as the first superintendent of the Norfolk Prison Colony to his dramatic State House hearing and dismissal in 1934. In order to understand the social and spatial design of Norfolk’s “model prison community,” this article reviews Gills’ tenure as superintendent through administrative documents, newspaper reports, and his writings on criminal justice reform. Particular attention is given to the relationship between correctional administration and public consciousness. Concluding insights are offered on the possible lessons from Norfolk Prison Colony for contemporary reform efforts.

scholarly journals Foucault, prison, and human rights: A dialectic of theory and criminal justice reform

2021 ◽  
pp. 136248062110159
Author(s):  
Mugambi Jouet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Penal Reform ◽  
Foucauldian Theory ◽  
Prison Abolition ◽  
Abolition Movement

Michel Foucault’s advocacy toward penal reform in France differed from his theories. Although Foucault is associated with the prison abolition movement, he also proposed more humane prisons. The article reframes Foucauldian theory through a dialectic with the theories of Marc Ancel, a prominent figure in the emergence of liberal sentencing norms in France. Ancel and Foucault were contemporaries whose legacies are intertwined. Ancel defended more benevolent prisons where experts would rehabilitate offenders. This evokes exactly what Discipline and Punish cast as an insidious strategy of social control. In reality, Foucault and Ancel converged in intriguing ways. The dialectic offers another perspective on Foucault, whose theories have fostered skepticism about the possibility of progress. While mass incarceration’s rise in the United States may evoke a Foucauldian dystopia, the relative development of human rights and dignity in European punishment reflects aspirations that Foucault embraced as an activist concerned about fatalistic interpretations of his theories.

The Violence of Inequality: Race and Lobbying in the Politics of Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-93
Author(s):  
Sappho Xenakis ◽  
Leonidas K. Cheliotis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Criminal Justice Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Us

There is no shortage of scholarly and other research on the reciprocal relationship that inequality bears to crime, victimisation and contact with the criminal justice system, both in the specific United States context and beyond. Often, however, inequality has been studied in conjunction with only one of the three phenomena at issue, despite the intersections that arguably obtain between them–and, indeed, between their respective connections with inequality itself. There are, moreover, forms of inequality that have received far less attention in pertinent research than their prevalence and broader significance would appear to merit. The purpose of this chapter is dual: first, to identify ways in which inequality’s linkages to crime, victimisation and criminal justice may relate to one another; and second, to highlight the need for a greater focus than has been placed heretofore on the role of institutionalised inequality of access to the political process, particularly as this works to bias criminal justice policy-making towards the preferences of financially motivated state lobbying groups at the expense of disadvantaged racial minorities. In so doing, the chapter singles out for analysis the US case and, more specifically, engages with key extant explanations of the staggering rise in the use of imprisonment in the country since the 1970s.

Doing the Right Thing

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Alison Shames ◽  
Ram Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Central Value ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Training And Supervision ◽  
European System ◽  
Supervision Practices ◽  
The Right

Human dignity plays a central and constitutive role within the German and Dutch criminal justice systems. It influences not only the overall approach to, and accepted purpose of, punishment, but also the types of sanctions that are typically doled out, the setup of their prisons, and the conditions in which prisoners find themselves once in custody. Although human dignity is not the paramount value in the American criminal justice system, this article contends that recent criminal justice reform efforts implicate human dignity into system practices to a greater degree than ever before. While the reform efforts are prompted by a concern for efficiency and efficacy, policymakers are increasingly relying on research that indicates that more humane and individualized treatment of offenders is a key component to achieving desired public safety outcomes. The article starts with a brief discussion of how human dignity became a central value of the European system and contrasts this with the historically weaker sway human dignity has played in the American system. It then demonstrates that the principle of human dignity is gaining influence through recent legislative reform efforts in the United States as well as changes in correctional training and supervision practices.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Crime And Criminal Justice ◽  
History Of Crime

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justicebrings together researchers who work on crime and criminal justice in the past with an emphasis on the interaction between history and social sciences. Although working on similar subject matters historians and social scientists are often motivated by different intellectual concerns. Historians seek knowledge about crime and criminal justice to better understand the past. In contrast, social scientists draw on past experiences to build sociological, criminological, or socio-legal knowledge. Nevertheless, researchers from both fields have a shared interest in social theory, in the use of social science techniques for analysis, and in a critical outlook in examining perceptions of the past that shape popular myths and justify criminal justice policies in the present. TheHandbookis intended as a guide for both current researchers and newcomers to orient themselves on key aspects of current research from both fields. TheHandbookincludes thirty-four essays covering theory and methods; forms of crime; crime, gender, and ethnicities; cultural representations of crime; the rise of criminology; law enforcement and policing; law, courts, and criminal justice; and punishment and prisons. The essays concentrate on the Atlantic world, particularly Europe and the United States, during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. All of the authors situate their topic within the wider historiography.

Restitution as a Sanction in Juvenile Court

1986 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
William G. Staples
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Juvenile Court ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
Policies And Practices

Over the past decade, restitution has assumed increasing significance as a sanction both in the juvenile and in the criminal justice system. The purpose of this article is to examine the current trend toward utilizing restitution from a critical and historical perspective. Current restitution policies and practices are placed within the context of three major trends in justice: (1) the individualization of the juvenile court; (2) the growing concern with the victims of crime, and (3) the blurring of traditional distinctions between criminal and tort law. Restitution as a sanction is evaluated in the context of these three developments, and the contemporary form of restitution is compared with its historical predecessors.

Setting the Regional Agenda: A Critique of Posthegemonic Regionalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Petersen ◽  
Carsten-Andreas Schulz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Regional Agenda ◽  
New Phase

AbstractThere is a growing scholarly consensus that Latin American regionalism has entered a new phase. For some observers, the increasing complexity of regional cooperation initiatives renders collective action ineffective. For others, the creation of new schemes signals a “posthegemonic” moment that has opened a space for collaboration on social issues. Both camps attribute this shift to the absence of the United States and the presence of left-leaning governments. By contrast, this study demonstrates that this agenda is not new, nor has the United States impeded similar initiatives in the past. In fact, the United States was instrumental in expanding regional cooperation on social issues in the early twentieth century. Instead, this article argues that agenda shifts are best explained by an evolving consensus about the role of the state. The “new agenda” is in line with historical attempts by governments to use regionalism to bolster their own domestic reforms.

How Exceptional Is the History of Violence and Criminal Justice in the United States? Variation across Time and Space as the Keys to Understanding Homicide and Punitiveness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph Roth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Long Span ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter contends that American exceptionalism is a far more complex issue than it initially appears. Which nations are exceptional? When, and in what ways? Once the question of exceptionalism is asked over a long span of time, its answer is almost always fluid and complicated. Hence, the chapter turns to comparative historical research in isolating the most important causes of incidents like homicide and punitive penal policies, by showing that those causes recur again and again in the presence of certain phenomena. It asserts that history shows that the relationship between crime and punitiveness is far from simple.

Structuralism, Neoliberalism, and the U.S. Criminal Justice System

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-85
Author(s):  
Larry Nackerud
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Critical Criminology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
System P ◽  
Macro Social Work

This chapter addresses how structuralism can be a useful lens through which to view social issues and specifically, for viewing neoliberalism in the United States and its seeming natural predecessors, privatization and deregulation. Such efforts within the criminal justice system may present as, for example, private prison industry and mass incarceration. There are three goals of this chapter: (a) to convince the reader of the value of structural theory as a means of examining helping systems, (b) to convince the reader to be wary of neoliberal prescriptive practices, and (c) to suggest to the reader a consideration for how social work can affect criminal justice reform from the macro social work perspective. With regard to the latter, this chapter also addresses the role of radical social work and critical criminology.

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