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"Neoliberal Penality: A Brief Genealogy"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new piece from Bernard Harcourt available here via SSRN.  Anyone thinking a lot (or even a little) about modern mass incarceration ought to be reading all of Professor Harcourt's work, and here is the abstract from this new piece: The turn of the twenty first century witnessed important shifts in punishment practices.  The most shocking is mass incarceration ? the exponential rise in prisoners in state and federal penitentiaries and in county jails beginning in 1973.  It is tempting to view these developments as evidence of something new that emerged in the 1970s ? of a new culture of control, a new penology, or a new turn to biopower.  But it would be a mistake to place too much emphasis on the 1970s since most of the recent trends have antecedents and parallels in the early twentieth century...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 29, 2009 (boomark / email).