The Will to Punish

The Will to Punish PDF Author: Didier Fassin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019088858X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Over the last few decades, most societies have become more repressive, their laws more relentless, their magistrates more inflexible, independently of the evolution of crime. In The Will to Punish, using an approach both genealogical and ethnographic, distinguished anthropologist Didier Fassin addresses the major issues raised by this punitive moment through an inquiry into the very foundations of punishment. What is punishment? Why punish? Who is punished? Through these three questions, he initiates a critical dialogue with moral philosophy and legal theory on the definition, the justification and the distribution of punishment. Discussing various historical and national contexts, mobilizing a ten-year research program on police, justice and prison, and taking up the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, he shows that the link between crime and punishment is an historical artifact, that the response to crime has not always been the infliction of pain, that punishment does not only proceed from rational logics used to legitimize it, that more severity in sentencing often means increasing social inequality before the law, and that the question, "What should be punished?" always comes down to the questions "Whom do we deem punishable?" and "Whom do we want to be spared?" Going against a triumphant penal populism, this investigation proposes a salutary revision of the presuppositions that nourish the passion for punishing and invites to rethink the place of punishment in the contemporary world. The theses developed in the volume are discussed by criminologist David Garland, historian Rebecca McLennan, and sociologist Bruce Western, to whom Didier Fassin responds in a short essay.

The Will to Punish

The Will to Punish PDF Author: Didier Fassin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019088858X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
Over the last few decades, most societies have become more repressive, their laws more relentless, their magistrates more inflexible, independently of the evolution of crime. In The Will to Punish, using an approach both genealogical and ethnographic, distinguished anthropologist Didier Fassin addresses the major issues raised by this punitive moment through an inquiry into the very foundations of punishment. What is punishment? Why punish? Who is punished? Through these three questions, he initiates a critical dialogue with moral philosophy and legal theory on the definition, the justification and the distribution of punishment. Discussing various historical and national contexts, mobilizing a ten-year research program on police, justice and prison, and taking up the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, he shows that the link between crime and punishment is an historical artifact, that the response to crime has not always been the infliction of pain, that punishment does not only proceed from rational logics used to legitimize it, that more severity in sentencing often means increasing social inequality before the law, and that the question, "What should be punished?" always comes down to the questions "Whom do we deem punishable?" and "Whom do we want to be spared?" Going against a triumphant penal populism, this investigation proposes a salutary revision of the presuppositions that nourish the passion for punishing and invites to rethink the place of punishment in the contemporary world. The theses developed in the volume are discussed by criminologist David Garland, historian Rebecca McLennan, and sociologist Bruce Western, to whom Didier Fassin responds in a short essay.

The Powers that Punish

The Powers that Punish PDF Author: Charles Bright
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047202311X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
In a pathbreaking study of a major state prison, Michigan's Jackson State Penitentiary during the middle years of this century, Charles Bright addresses several aspects of the history and theory of punishment. The study is an institutional history of an American penitentiary, concerned with how a carceral regime was organized and maintained, how prisoners were treated and involved in the creation of a regime of order and how penal practices were explained and defended in public. In addition, it is a meditation upon punishment in modern society and a critical engagement with prevailing theories of punishment coming out of liberal, Marxist and post structuralist traditions. Deploying theory critically in a historic narrative, it applies new, relational theories of power to political institutions and practices. Finally, in studying the history of the Jackson prison, Bright provides a rich account, full of villains and a few heroes, of state politics in Michigan during a period of rapid transition between the 1920s to the 1950s. The book will be of direct relevance to criminologists and scholars of punishment, and to historians concerned with the history of punishment and prisons in the United States. It will also be useful to political scientists and historians concerned with exploring new approaches to the study of power and with the transformation of state politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Finally Bright tells a story which will fascinate students of modern Michigan history. Charles Bright is a historian and Lecturer at the Residential College of the University of Michigan.

Judge and Punish

Judge and Punish PDF Author: Geoffroy de Lagasnerie
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503605795
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
What remains anti-democratic in our criminal justice systems, and where does it come from? Geoffroy de Lagasnerie spent years sitting in on trials, watching as individuals were judged and sentenced for armed robbery, assault, rape, and murder. His experience led to this original reflection on the penal state, power, and violence that identifies a paradox in the way justice is exercised in liberal democracies. In order to pronounce a judgment, a trial must construct an individualizing story of actors and their acts; but in order to punish, each act between individuals must be transformed into an aggression against society as a whole, against the state itself. The law is often presented as the reign of reason over passion. Instead, it leads to trauma, dispossession, and violence. Only by overturning our inherited legal fictions can we envision forms of truer justice. Combining narratives of real trials with theoretical analysis, Judge and Punish shows that juridical institutions are not merely a response to crime. The state claims to guarantee our security, yet from our birth, we also belong to it. The criminal trial, a magnifying mirror, reveals our true condition as political subjects.

Why Punish? How Much?

Why Punish? How Much? PDF Author: Michael H. Tonry
Publisher:
ISBN: 019532885X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Punishment, like all complex human institutions, tends to change as ways of thinking go in and out of fashion. Normative, political, social, psychological, and legal ideas concerning punishment have changed drastically over time, and especially in recent decades. Why Punish? How Much? collects essays from classical philosophers and contemporary theorists to examine these shifts. Michael Tonry has gathered a comprehensive set of readings ranging from Kant, Hegel, and Bentham to recent writings on developments in the behavioral and medical sciences. Together they cover foundations of punishment theory such as consequentialism, retributivism, and functionalism, new approaches like restorative, communitarian, and therapeutic justice, and mixed approaches that attempt to link theory and policy. This volume includes an accessible introduction that chronicles the development of punishment systems and theorizing over the course of the last two centuries. Why Punish? How Much? provides a fresh and comprehensive approach to thinking about punishment and sentencing for a broad range of law, sociology, philosophy, and criminology courses.

Why Punish?

Why Punish? PDF Author: Rob Canton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350306053
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Why do we punish? Is it because only punishment can achieve justice for victims and 'right the wrong' of a crime? Or is it justified because it reduces crime, by deterring potential offenders, offering rehabilitative treatment to others and incapacitating the most dangerous? The complex answers to this enduring question vary across time and place, and are directly linked to people's personal, cultural, social, religious and ethical commitments and even their sense of identity. This unique introduction to the philosophy of punishment provides a systematic analysis of the themes of retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation and restorative justice. Integrating philosophical, sociological, political and ethical perspectives, it provides a thorough and wide-ranging discussion of the purposes, meanings and justifications of punishment for crime and the extent to which punishment does, could or should live up to what it claims to achieve. Why Punish? challenges criminology and criminal justice students as well as policy makers, judges, magistrates and criminal justice practitioners to think more critically about the role of punishment and the moral principles that underpin it. Bridging abstract theory with the realities of practice, Rob Canton asks what better punishment would look like and how it can be achieved.

The Pleasure of Punishment

The Pleasure of Punishment PDF Author: Magnus Hörnqvist
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429589611
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Based on a reading of contemporary philosophical arguments, this book accounts for how punishment has provided audiences with pleasure in different historical contexts. Watching tragedies, contemplating hell, attending executions, or imagining prisons have generated pleasure, according to contemporary observers, in ancient Greece, in medieval Catholic Europe, in the early-modern absolutist states, and in the post-1968 Western world. The pleasure was often judged morally problematic, and raised questions about which desires were satisfied, and what the enjoyment was like. This book offers a research synthesis that ties together existing work on the pleasure of punishment. It considers how the shared joys of punishment gradually disappeared from the public view at a precise historic conjuncture, and explores whether arguments about the carnivalesque character of cruelty can provide support for the continued existence of penal pleasure. Towards the end of this book, the reader will discover, if willing to go along and follow desire to places which are full of pain and suffering, that deeply entwined with the desire for punishment, there is also the desire for social justice. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, philosophy and all those interested in the pleasures of punishment.

Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish PDF Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307819299
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
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.

When People Want Punishment

When People Want Punishment PDF Author: Lily L. Tsai
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108897673
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Against the backdrop of rising populism around the world and democratic backsliding in countries with robust, multiparty elections, this book asks why ordinary people favor authoritarian leaders. Much of the existing scholarship on illiberal regimes and authoritarian durability focuses on institutional explanations, but Tsai argues that, to better understand these issues, we need to examine public opinion and citizens' concerns about retributive justice. Government authorities uphold retributive justice - and are viewed by citizens as fair and committed to public good - when they affirm society's basic values by punishing wrongdoers who act against these values. Tsai argues that the production of retributive justice and moral order is a central function of the state and an important component of state building. Drawing on rich empirical evidence from in-depth fieldwork, original surveys, and innovative experiments, the book provides a new framework for understanding authoritarian resilience and democratic fragility.

Punishment in Popular Culture

Punishment in Popular Culture PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479861952
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Resource added for the Criminal Justice – Law Enforcement 105046 and Professional Studies 105045 programs.

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments PDF Author: Cesare Beccaria
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
ISBN: 1584776382
Category : Criminal justice, Administration of
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Reprint of the fourth edition, which contains an additional text attributed to Voltaire. Originally published anonymously in 1764, Dei Delitti e Delle Pene was the first systematic study of the principles of crime and punishment. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, its advocacy of crime prevention and the abolition of torture and capital punishment marked a significant advance in criminological thought, which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It had a profound influence on the development of criminal law in Europe and the United States.