Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy: Liberty and Power in the Early Republic

by Mark E. Kann

Overview

Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy tells the story of how first-generation Americans coupled their legacy of liberty with a penal philosophy that promoted patriarchy, especially for marginal Americans.
American patriots fought a revolution in the name of liberty. Their victory celebrations barely ended before leaders expressed fears that immigrants, African Americans, women, and the lower classes were prone to vice, disorder, and crime. This spurred a generation of penal reformers to promote successfully the most systematic institution ever devised for stripping people of liberty: the penitentiary.
Today, Americans laud liberty but few citizens contest the legitimacy of federal, state, and local government authority to incarcerate 2 million people and subject another 4.7 million probationers and parolees to scrutiny, surveillance, and supervision. How did classical liberalism aid in the development of such expansive penal practices in the wake of the War of Independence?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814747834
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2005
Pages:	337
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Mark E. Kann, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History, held the USC Associates Chair in Social Science at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Republic of Men (NYU Press, 1998) and Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy (NYU Press, 2005).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Punishment
1 Justifications for Punishment
2 Purposes of Punishment
3 Targets of Punishment
Part II Prisons
4 Benjamin Rush: Patriarch of Penal Reform
5 The Case against Traditional Punishments
6 Penitentiary Punishment
7 Prison Discipline and Prison Patriarchs
8 Disenchantment
9 Warehousing Marginal Americans
Part III Patriarchy
10 Concealing Punishment
11 Stretching Patriarchal Political Power
Conclusion: Liberty and Power
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This work will take its place among the growing corpus of important studies that examine patriarchy and society’s need to punish its criminals in ways it paradoxically deemed more enlightened and humanitarian than in times past. Kahn uses substantial primary and secondary material. . . . Recommended.”
-Choice,

“Mark E. Kannhas written a fascinating, thought-provoking, and timely political-historical study of penal thought and practice in the formative years of the United States.”
-American Historical Review

,

“This is a valuable book for those wishing to familiarize themselves with the scholarship on prison reform in the nineteenth-century United States.”
-Men and Masculinities

Editorial Reviews

"Mark E. Kannhas written a fascinating, thought-provoking, and timely political-historical study of penal thought and practice in the formative years of the United States."

American Historical Review

"This work will take its place among the growing corpus of important studies that examine patriarchy and societys need to punish its criminals in ways it paradoxically deemed more enlightened and humanitarian than in times past. Kahn uses substantial primary and secondary material. . . . Recommended."

Choice

"This is a valuable book for those wishing to familiarize themselves with the scholarship on prison reform in the nineteenth-century United States."

Men and Masculinities

This work will take its place among the growing corpus of important studies that examine patriarchy and society’s need to punish its criminals in ways it paradoxically deemed more enlightened and humanitarian than in times past. Kahn uses substantial primary and secondary material. . . . Recommended.”
-Choice

“This is a valuable book for those wishing to familiarize themselves with the scholarship on prison reform in the nineteenth-century United States.”
-Men and Masculinities

“Mark E. Kannhas written a fascinating, thought-provoking, and timely political-historical study of penal thought and practice in the formative years of the United States.”
-American Historical Review

From the Publisher