Editor’s Introduction

By Mack, Arien

THIS ISSUE CONTAINS ALMOST ALL OF THE PAPERS FROM THE SIXTEENTH Social Research conference, Punishment: The US Record, which took place at The New School in the fall of 2006. The decision to organize a conference on who, what, why, and how we punish criminal acts had several different sources, some obvious-the staggering increase in the number of people incarcerated in the United States since the 1970s (the United States now has the highest incarceration rate in the world despite a drop in crime rates) and the well-known fact that the United States, unlike other Western democracies, reaffirms its dubious claim to exceptionalism by continuing to mandate capital punishment in many states of the union. Some are less obvious. Among the less obvious that were discussed at conference was an interest in the foundations of our ideas of punishment that stem from theology and philosophy and seem to have deep psychological roots. We were concerned as well about how these ideas play out in our understandings of the coercive power of a democratic state. We believed and continue to believe that there is an urgent need to look at the social, political, and economic causes and consequences of the ways in which we punish, especially since we now seem to be living in a carcerai state. Here is some of the evidence.

* Since the 1970s our prison population has increased by about 650 percent, despite the decrease in the crime rate.

* As of 2005, over 2 million people were imprisoned in this country. That is almost 1 in every 136 US residents.

* Our per capita incarceration rates are about 8 times higher than those in Europe.

* Black men who make up only 6 percent of the US population constitute over 40 percent of our prison population.

* A black man has a 32 percent chance of being imprisoned at some point in his lifetime.

* Ten states do not allow ex-cons to vote.

* Nearly 2,800,000 American children have at least one parent in prison.

* Women prisoners are sometimes shackled during childbirth.

* There are roughly 3,400 inmates on death row in the United States.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

This issue, which is organized into six sections to reflect the six sessions of the conference, asks questions about the why, what, how, and who of punishment, on the assumption that a discussion of these issues will lead to a clearer understanding of the often heinous consequences of our current practices of punishment and aid in the search for viable alternatives.

None of our Social Research conferences would be possible without the generous support and advice from others. The Punishment conference was no exception. It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the generous support of our funders: the Russell Sage Foundation, the After-Prison Initiative of the Open Society Institute’s US Justice Fund, the Ford Foundation, and The J. M. Kaplan Foundation. This conference would never have happened without their support.

I would also like to express my gratitude to our group of advisers who attended the planning meetings for this conference, many of whom continued to provide advice during the sometimes difficult path from the idea of the conference to the conference itself. Our full list of advisers appears below. However, I would like to express my very special thanks to Bernard Harcourt who, although we had never met until the day of the conference, was an extraordinarily generous and deeply knowledgeable adviser who was unfailingly ready to help me think through the many problems that arose, and to Susan Tucker who provided many invaluable suggestions about whom to invite to speak and helped us bring Carey Lowell and Richard Gere to the conference to read the writings of people in prison, which was our moving keynote event. (This reading can be listened to on our website, www.socres.org/punishment/ readings.htm.)

Advisers

Jerome Bruner, Research Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Fellow, NYU Law School

Vincent Crapanzano, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Anthropology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York

George P. Fletcher, Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence, Columbia Law School

Harry Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University

Marie Gottschalk, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

Bernard Harcourt, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of Academic Affairs at the Law School of the University of Chicago

John Hollander, Sterling Professor of English, Yale University

Michael Ignatieff, Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

John Jeffries, Consultant

William Johnston, Program Officer, The After-Prison Initiative, US Justice Fund, Open Society Institute

George Kateb, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Princeton University

Debbie A. Mukamal, Director, Prisoner Reentry Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Aryeh Neier, President, Open Society Institute

Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Cassandra Stubbs, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project

Cass Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Law School, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago

Charles Tilly, Joseph L Buttenwieser Professor of Social Sciences, Columbia University

Susan Tucker, Director, The After-Prison Initiative, US Justice Fund, Open Society Fund

James Walkup, Associate Professor, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers University

Eric Wanner, President, Russell Sage Foundation

David Weiman, Alena Wels Hirschorn ’58 Professor of Economics, Barnard College

Bruce Western, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University

Copyright New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty Summer 2007

(c) 2007 Social Research. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.