Why is America So Punitive?
A Report on the Deliberations of
The Interdisciplinary Roundtable on
Punitiveness in America
Held at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
April 2-3, 2015

Authors: Bettina Muenster and Jennifer Trone
March 2016

Supported By:

Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
which has a long history supporting research that leads to social change. In this instance, the
Foundation hoped that a cross-pollination of perspectives could unpack the phenomenon of
punitiveness in the operations of the American criminal justice system and, more importantly,
illuminate the path forward to a more humane and effective response to crime. The Roundtable thus
joins a larger portfolio of research and programmatic initiatives at MacArthur that are designed to
find ways to reduce America’s reliance on incarceration while promoting public safety and justice.

About Us
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people, effective
institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. MacArthur is
placing a few big bets that truly significant progress is possible on some of the world’s most pressing
social challenges, including over-incarceration, global climate change, nuclear risk, and significantly
increasing capital for the social sector. In addition to the MacArthur Fellows Program, the
Foundation continues its historic commitments to the role of journalism in a responsible and
responsive democracy; the strength and vitality of our headquarters city, Chicago; and generating
new knowledge about critical issues.
MacArthur is one of the nation's largest independent foundations. Organizations supported by the
Foundation work in about 50 countries. In addition to Chicago, MacArthur has offices in India,
Mexico, and Nigeria.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York is an international
leader in educating for justice, offering a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to
upwards of 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching,
scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to
society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and
the rule of law.
John Jay is a community of motivated and intellectually committed individuals who explore justice
in its many dimensions. The College’s liberal arts curriculum equips students to pursue advanced
study and meaningful, rewarding careers in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Its
professional programs introduce students to foundational and newly emerging fields and prepare
them for advancement within their chosen professions.

1

Author Bios
Bettina Muenster is the Executive Associate for Research and Special Project to President Jeremy
Travis at John Jay College. In that position she manages the President’s speeches, testimonies and
publications, functions as liaison to internal and external stakeholders, coordinates various events
and initiatives, and directs the prestigious Presidential Internship Program. In the past, she has
worked part time as Research Assistant for the Center for Court Innovation, conducted research
under the supervision of JJC Presidential Scholar, Scott Atran, and as Research Assistant for Charles
B. Strozier, Director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay. Ms. Muenster graduated from John Jay
College with a BA/MA degree in Forensic Psychology and a Masters Certificate in Terrorism
Studies in 2006.
Jennifer Trone has more than 20 years of professional experience in the nonprofit sector,
helping organizations use communications strategically to spread insights, influence and inspire
others, and garner support. Working as a consultant since 2008, her clients include nonprofit
organizations, government agencies, foundations and academic institutions. She also serves on
the Board of Directors of Skylight, a human rights media organization. Prior to working
independently, Jennifer was Communications Advisor to the first Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court, Communications Director of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s
Prisons, and before that, a senior staff member at the Vera Institute of Justice.

2

Roundtable Participants
Vanessa Barker, Associate Professor of
Sociology at Stockholm University
Katherine Beckett, Professor in the
Department of Sociology and Law,
Societies, and Justice Program at the
University of Washington
Todd Clear, Provost at Rutgers
University-Newark
Anne-Marie Cusac, Associate Professor
of Journalism, College of Arts and
Sciences at Roosevelt University,
Chicago, and contributing writer of The
Progressive

Jonathan Jacobs, Professor of
Philosophy and Director of the Institute
of Criminal Justice Ethics at John Jay
College of Criminal Justice
Michael Jacobson, Director of the
CUNY institute for State and Local
Governance (ISLG)
Jan de Keijser, Professor of
Criminology at the Institute of Criminal
Law and Criminology and Associate
Editor of the European Journal of
Criminology

Alan Page Fiske, Psychological
Anthropologist at UCLA

Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz
Professor of Social Sciences and
Professor of Economics at Brown
University

Mark Fondacaro, Professor of
Psychology at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice

Shadd Maruna, Dean and Professor at
the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers
University-Newark

Laurie R. Garduque, Director for
Justice Reforms (U.S.) for the John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Tracey L. Meares, Walton Hale
Hamilton Professor at Yale Law School

David Garland, Professor of Sociology
and Law at New York University
Marie Gottschalk, Professor of Political
Science at the University of
Pennsylvania
David A. Green, Assistant Professor of
Sociology at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice
Maria Hartwig, Associate Professor of
Psychology at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice
Judge Morris B. Hoffman, Appointed
to the Denver District Court in December
1990

James Morone, John Hazen White
Professor of Political Science and Public
Policy at Brown University where he is
the director of their Taubman Public
Policy Program
Stephen J. Morse, Ferdinand Wakeman
Hubbell Professor of Law, Professor of
Psychology and Law in Psychiatry, and
the Associate Director of the Center for
Neuroscience & Society at the University
of Pennsylvania
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Visiting
Professor of History at The Graduate
Center, CUNY and the Director of the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture at the New York Public Library

Douglas N. Husak, Professor of
Philosophy at Rutgers University

Naomi Murakawa, Associate Professor
of African Studies at Princeton
University

Jonathan Jackson, Professor of
Research Methodology and a member of
the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at
the London School of Economics

Christian Pfeiffer, Director of the
Criminological Research Institute of
Lower Saxony

Julian Roberts, Professor of
Criminology at the Centre for
Criminology, Faculty of Law at Oxford
University and a member of the
Sentencing Council of England and
Wales
Andrew Skotnicki, Professor of
Christian Ethics at Manhattan College in
New York
Sonja Snacken, Professor of
Criminology, Penology, and Sociology
of Law at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
(Belguim)
Michael Tonry, McKnight Presidential
Professor of Criminal Law and Policy,
Director of the Institute on Crime and
Public Policy of the University of
Minnesota, and Scientific Member of
Max Planck Institute on Comparative
and International Criminal Law in
Freidburg, Germany
Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay
College of Criminal Justice
Nicholas Turner, President and Director
of the Vera Institute of Justice
Tom R. Tyler, Macklin Fleming
Professor of Law and Professor of
Psychology at Yale Law School
Bruce Western, Professor of Sociology
and Director of the Malcolm Wiener
Center for Social Policy at the Harvard
Kennedy School of Government
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation
Professor of Comparative and Foreign
Law at Yale Law School
Cathy Spatz Widom, Distinguished
Professor in the Psychology Department
at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
and a member of the Graduate Center
faculty at the City University of New
York
Howard Zehr, widely known as “the
grandfather of restorative justice,” Codirector of the new Zehr Institute for
Restorative Justice

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Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements & About Us…..…………………………………………………………………………………1
Author Bios……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….2
Roundtable Participants …………………………………………………………………………………………………3
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4
Introduction by President Jeremy Travis.........................................................................................5-8
Section I – An Unprecedented Opportunity for Change……………………………………………..9-11
Section II – The Great Build Up: How Did We Get Here?………………………………………..11-14
Section III – Punishment through the Lens of History: Racism in America……………14-17
Section IV – American Exceptionalism: A Comparative Approach…………………………17-23
Section V – The Psychology of Punishment: On Blame and Responsibility………….....23-27
Section VI – The Role of Religion: Retribution versus Forgiveness………………………….27-29
Section VII – Making Policy: The Power and Limitations of Data…………………………...29-33
Section VIII – Conclusion: An Emerging Movement in a Challenging Time……...…..33-35

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March 2016

Dear colleagues:
In April 2015, a remarkable group of 32 national and international scholars met at John Jay College
for two days to address a complex and profound question: “Why is America so punitive”?
This question comes at a critical time in American history. A new national consensus seems to be
emerging that America should reduce its levels of incarceration, reform police practices, cut back on
the extent of criminal justice supervision, and address the alienation between the justice system and
the public, particularly communities of color. More fundamentally, there is renewed interest, from
both ends of the political spectrum, to find ways to limit the exercise of state power in the name of
crime control. At the same time, there is widespread recognition that achieving deep and lasting
reform will require a new framework for how to respond to crime, the victims of crime, and those
who violate the law – a framework that the public understands and embraces. Given this sense of
simultaneous optimism and challenge, the time seemed ripe for a discussion of American views on
punishment. The Interdisciplinary Roundtable on Punitiveness in America was created in the hopes
that a group of distinguished scholars, representing different disciplines, perspectives and countries,
could help shape this important national discussion.
The idea of convening the Roundtable arose in conversations I had with Julia Stasch and Laurie
Garduque, President and Director of Justice Reform, respectively, of the John T. and Catherin D.
MacArthur Foundation. We had collaborated on another, closely related project, the National
Academies report on the causes and consequences of high rates of incarceration in the United
States1. The project had been co-funded by MacArthur and the National Institute of Justice; I had
chaired the consensus panel that produced the report. We realized that the National Academies
report, which had carefully reviewed the research on the causes of the prison boom, had not been
able to address a fundamental question which lies behind the statutory changes, political dynamics
and economic shifts that gave rise to tough on crime policies: simply put, why is America so
punitive? We recognized that the mandate of the National Academies committee was limited to
incarceration, so the resultant report did not examine other expressions of punitiveness. Furthermore,
the topic of punitiveness does not easily lend itself to a review of the evidence that lies at the heart of
1

Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western and Steve Redburn, editors. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. Washington,
DC: The National Academies Press, 2014.

5

the work of a National Academies consensus panel. Finally, the assignment given the panel was to
focus on the American experience, so the panel could not systematically consider the use of
punishment and prison in other countries. This recognition of the importance of the general topic of
punitiveness, the necessity to consider comparative perspectives, and the importance of
interdisciplinary exploration led to the creation of the Roundtable with funding generously provided
by the MacArthur Foundation. At John Jay College, intellectual leadership on the scope and
composition of the Roundtable was provided by two members of the John Jay faculty, Dr. David
Green of Political Science and Dr. Maria Hartwig of Psychology. We were ably assisted by Bettina
Muenster, Executive Associate for Research and Special Projects in my office.
In many ways, the report of the National Academies provided a backdrop for the discussions of the
Roundtable. That report documented the unprecedented growth of incarceration in the United States
over the last four decades, examined the causes for that growth, and provided an extensive review of
the evidence on the consequences of this unprecedented expansion of this country’s use of prison as
a response to crime. The report presented data that have become a familiar part of the public
discourse on the state of the American criminal justice system:


Since 1970, the United States prison population has risen 700%, rendering it the world’s
leading jailer of its own citizens.2



The rate of incarceration, as a number per 100,000 residents, had increased over the same
time from 161 to 767.3



Today, the U.S. holds approximately 25% of the world’s prisoners but makes up only 5% of
the world’s population.4



Reflecting the racial disparities in incarceration rates, today one in three African-American
men has a chance of being sentenced to a prison term of at least a year in his lifetime.5



2.7 million children currently have a parent in prison, representing 3.6% of all minor
children. For African-American children, the rate is 11.4%.6



The population under community supervision has increased by approximately 280% from
1980 to 2008.7



The population in American jails has grown from 200,000 in 1973 to 2.2 million in 2009.8

In public discussions, these statistics are frequently complemented by powerful and painful
narratives of individuals currently or formerly incarcerated who have endured the harshness of jail or
prison life. These narratives include individual experiences in solitary confinement and triple-celling
2

Ibid.
Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 The Sentencing Project. (2013). Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human Rights Committee Regarding Racial Disparities in the United
States Criminal Justice System. http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_ICCPR%20Race%20and%20Justice%20Shadow%20Report.pdf.
6
The Pew Charitable Trusts. (2010). Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2010/collateralcosts1pdf.pdf.
7 James, N. (2011). Offender Reentry: Correctional Statistics, Reintegration into the Community, and Recidivism. http://www.nationalcia.org/wpcontent/uploads/Correctional-Statistics-Reintegration-into-the-Community.pdf.
8
The Growth of Incarceration in the United States (2014).
3

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or more severe overcrowding. They describe the detrimental impact of the deprivation of
fundamental services while incarcerated, whether treatment for addiction or mental illness, access to
educational and vocational programs, or simple contact with family members. These personal stories
also describe the obstacles to reintegration upon release, including barriers to employment, housing,
and full citizenship. In these ways, and so many others, American sentencing and correctional
policies have created an environment that diminishes human dignity for those incarcerated, extends
punishment way beyond the prison walls, and places an immense burden on individuals, families,
communities and society at large.
Against this backdrop and consistent with the belief that now is the time to reevaluate the country’s
approach to punishment, Roundtable participants were asked to tackle these questions:
1. At the most basic level, what motivates individuals, cultures, and institutions to punish?
2. By what mechanisms can we explain the exceptionalism of American punitiveness? That is,
why does America differ from other Western countries in its approach to punishment?
3. Can the pattern of this “American penal exceptionalism” be altered through changes in
criminal justice and punishment policy?
4. If so, how might this be accomplished? What strategies are most likely to be effective in
influencing American penal policy?
The Roundtable hosted 32 scholars and experts at the top of their fields for a two-day session to
discuss the American propensity to resort to harsh punishment. The Roundtable meeting was quite
different from the typical academic symposium. The diversity of disciplines represented around the
table – psychology, sociology and journalism; economics and political science; history, religion and
philosophy; criminology and the law – by itself guaranteed fresh insights and creative conceptual
tensions. Furthermore, the inclusion of several European scholars provided a resourceful
counterpoint to American perspectives. Finally, the topic – understanding punitiveness in America in
relation to the reality of mass incarceration – represented a departure from traditional scholarly
inquiries.
To launch the conversation and provide useful thematic context, seven papers were commissioned
and shared with the group ahead of the meeting. Authors briefly presented their papers at the
Roundtable, setting the stage for a lengthy interdisciplinary discussion that I facilitated. Papers were
presented in the following order:
1. Bruce Western, Harvard University, “Recent Trends in Punitive Criminal Justice in the
United States.”
2. James Q. Whitman, Yale Law School, “Presumption of Innocence or Presumption of
Mercy?: Weighing Two Western Modes of Justice.”
3. Mark R. Fondacaro and Megan J. O’Toole, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Graduate
Center, “Psychological Perspectives on Punishment: Retributive and Consequentialist
Responses to Crime.”

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4. Jonathan Jacobs, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, “Punitiveness: A Philosophical
Perspective.”
5. Andrew Skotnicki, Manhattan College, “Theological Approaches to Wrongdoing,
Punishment, and Forgiveness.”
6. Hannah Walker and Naomi Murakawa, University of Washington and Princeton University,
“Political and Policy Perspectives on Punishment: No Exit? The Limits of Carceral State
Retrenchment.”
7. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, “The Long Arm of the Past: Historical and Racial Perspectives on
American Punitiveness.”
This report is intended to represent a distillation of some of the key insights and critical exchanges
from a very rich two-day discussion. It has been prepared by Bettina Muenster, who served as
administrative coordinator of the Roundtable, and Jennifer Trone, an experienced writer on criminal
justice topics. The format includes quotes taken from the proceedings, interviews with selected
participants, and excerpts from the above seven papers. The report also features topical segments in
boxes throughout the text. These sidebars were not part of the two-day deliberations but serve to
provide additional context on an issue or program worth highlighting. All proceedings, including this
report, the edited interviews, the program and bios of participants, and comprehensive background
information on the rationale of the Punitiveness Roundtable are available on a webpage specifically
created for this initiative. That webpage can be accessed here:
http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/punitivenessinamerica.
I wish to thank the MacArthur Foundation for its support of this exploration of this important topic.
I am also grateful to Professors Green and Hartwig, Bettina Muenster, presidential interns Elissa
Gomez, Ossama Ayesh, and Ana Paredes and consultant Jennifer Trone for their invaluable
contributions to this project. They brought this concept from idea to reality. We are all indebted to
the members of the Roundtable for lending their insights to this discussion and for their personal
commitment to this project. Over the longer term, we hope that the Roundtable discussion results in
new opportunities for collaboration across disciplines and beyond national boundaries. We are
gratified to see this already happening. On a broader level, we hope that this discussion, and this
report, generates the type of introspection and reflection necessary for deep and lasting change in
criminal justice policy in this country.
Sincerely,

Jeremy Travis

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Section I – An Unprecedented Opportunity for Change
When John Legend accepted his Oscar for Best Original Song from the film
“Selma” in February, 2015 and said, “the struggle for justice is right now,” he
pointed to mass incarceration in particular. “We live in the most incarcerated
country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today
than were under slavery in 1850,” Legend emphasized, drawing on the insight
Michelle Alexander crystallized in her book The New Jim Crow.9
A speech like that would have seemed impossible before The New Jim Crow
became a bestseller, before the National Academy of Sciences report informed the
debate about whether mass incarceration has had any real benefits to offset the
staggering human and financial costs,10 before Ferguson erupted in riots sparked
by the death of Michael Brown, and before the steady decline in crime nationally
created space for widespread reflection. While recent history is far more complex
than the sum of these few developments, the tough-on-crime ethos that gripped
the nation for decades clearly has given way to a different kind of national
sentiment (See: “America’s Missing Black Men” on the following page11).
Once a highly divisive area of public policy – Newt Gingrich fought the 1994
Crime Bill on the grounds that it was not tough enough – crime and punishment is
often described today as the only issue on which there is bipartisan agreement. In
March of last year, Newt Gingrich joined Van Jones, former advisor to President
Obama, and others to host a “Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform”12
where Republican Governor of Georgia Nathan Deal fought back tears recalling
the sense of pride and accomplishment he saw among a class of drug court
graduates.13 The Koch brothers, stalwart supporters of conservative causes, have
emerged on the national stage as champions and financial backers of criminal
justice reform, working with progressive advocates such as the Center for
American Progress, the ACLU and Van Jones’s #cut50 campaign.14 “When
you've got more than 2 million people behind bars, I'll fight alongside anybody to
change those numbers,” Jones has said.15

“The good news in
the…reform field now
is, everyone and their
mother is for ending
mass incarceration.”
Michael Jacobson

9

Sze, Jack. Common and John Legend Powerful Academy Awards (The Oscars 2015) Speech Transcript. Filmed February 2015. YouTube video, 01:45.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy2WPtARfqU.
10 The Growth of Incarceration in the United States (2014).
11 Amy Chozick and Michael Barbaro, “Hillary Clinton Addresses Race and Justice In Impassioned Speech,” New York Times, April 29, 2015. Accessible at
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/politics/baltimore-forces-presidential-hopefuls-to-confront-a-jarringcrisis.html?rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=topNews&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article.
12 Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform. March 26th, 2015. http://www.bipartisansummit.org/livestream.html.
13
Ibid.
14 Hulse, Carl. (2015). Unlikely Cause Unites the Left and the Right: Criminal Justice Reform. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/us/politics/unlikely-cause-unites-the-left-and-the-right-justice-reform.html.
15 Ball, Molly. (2015). Do the Koch Brothers Really Care About Criminal-Justice Reform? The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/do-the-koch-brothers-really-care-about-criminal-justice-reform/386615/.

9

America’s Missing Black Men
In late April, as the city of Baltimore continued to simmer following the death in police custody of Freddie Gray,
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivered an impassioned speech in which she said there is something “profoundly
wrong” when 1.5 million black men are “missing” from their communities because of incarceration and premature death.
“From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable,” she said. “Not
only as a mother and grandmother, but as a citizen, a human being, my heart breaks for these young men and their
families. … We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.” As Clinton states, there
is a tremendous number of “missing” black men due to the rates of incarceration found in the United States. An article
released in April 2015 by the New York Times indicates that for every 100 black women not in jail, there are only 83 black
men. For every 100 white women, there is only one white man missing. The absence of these men has “far-reaching
consequences,” such as the disruption of family formations and decreased rates of marriage for black men. With this in
mind, Clinton called for a reform of the justice system and an “end to an era of mass incarceration.”

The field of philanthropy is providing significant support to this growing
movement. Since 2006, the Pew Charitable Trusts has supported and conducted
intensive technical assistance to states and published landmark research
documenting the high cost and poor public safety results of current sentencing and
corrections policies. More than 30 states have revised their incarceration policies
as part of the initiative, which in 2010 became formalized as the Justice
Reinvestment Initiative, a public-private partnership between Pew and the federal
Bureau of Justice Assistance. A few other examples of philanthropic leadership:
In February 2015 the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched a
$75 million effort focused specifically on reducing jail populations.16 In
November 2014, the Open Society Foundations made a $50 million grant to the
ACLU to support the organization’s national campaign to end mass
incarceration.17 Social entrepreneur Neil Barsky provided seed funding to create a
nonprofit news organization that focuses exclusively on criminal justice; The
Marshall Project, with veteran New York Times editor Bill Keller at the helm,
launched in November 2014. In recent years, the Laura and John Arnold
Foundation has supported groundbreaking research to spark and guide criminal
justice reform focusing specifically on the pretrial process.18 Working with a
dazzling array of organizations of varied political ideologies, the Arnold
Foundation played a lead role in forming the Coalition for Public Safety in
February 2015, yet another vehicle to promote Left-Right alliances.19

“Understanding why
we punish can in fact
help inform and
change the way we
hold people
accountable for their
wrongdoing.”
Laurie Garduque

To many it seems that the United States has reached a tipping point, while more
skeptical people believe that the commitment to reform is a mile wide and an inch
deep. The question thus remains: What can be done to foster a movement with
both depth and breadth? Precisely because events are occurring at a rapid pace

16

MacArthur Foundation. (2015). http://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/macarthur-launches-75m-initiative-reduce-americas-use-jails/.
ACLU. (2015). https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/aclu-awarded-50-million-open-society-foundations-end-mass-incarceration.
18 Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Criminal Justice Initiatives: http://www.arnoldfoundation.org/initiative/criminal-justice/.
19 Arnold, J. and Arnold, L. (2015). Fixing Justice in America. Politico Magazine. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/criminal-justice-reformcoalition-for-public-safety-116057.
17

10

and there is so much rhetoric already in play, it seems important to step back and
frame the issues through a wider lens.

Section II - The Great Build Up: How Did We Get Here?

“Why are we this
way? What has
happened to the
country?”
Jeremy Travis

Because high incarceration rates have been a feature of the American landscape
for so long, it is easy to view this reality as normal. Indeed the U.S. prisoner
population could not be so large without normalizing reliance on incarceration as
a response to crime and underlying social problems. But historical data show that
for much of the 20th century, the incarceration rate in the United States was
relatively low and stable.
According to The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes
and Consequences, the landmark study by the National Academy of Sciences
mentioned above, between 1925 when the United States first began to
systematically count the number of people confined in state and federal prisons
nationally and 1972 the incarceration rate hovered around 110 prisoners per
100,000 residents, rising to a high of 137 in 1939 coinciding with the Great
Depression. Because reliable counts of the jail population nationally were not
available until much later, that long-term trend is unknown. What is clear,
however, is that the combined prison and jail population grew rapidly and
continuously through the last quarter of the 20th century, and continued to
increase, albeit at a slower pace, for several more years, reaching a high of 767
incarcerated per 100,000 residents in 2007.20

“I think that the
general public is
completely unaware
of the sheer scale of
what is going on…”
Jan de Keijser

Even accounting for the fact that the incarceration rate diminished slightly after
2007 (dropping to 698 per 100,000 in 2014), the growth in absolute numbers – in
20

The Sentencing Project (2015). Trends in U.S. Corrections: U.S. State and Federal Prison Population, 1925-2014.
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Trends_in_Corrections_Fact_sheet.pdf.

11

other words, the tally of people behind bars on a given day in the United States –
has been enormous. In 1972 there were roughly 330,000 people in prison and
jail.21 By 2013, that number had mushroomed to 2.2 million people, or about one
out of every 144 Americans22. Moreover, as sociologist Bruce Western has
observed, most of the growth in the prisoner population occurred at the very
bottom rung in American society, involving mainly young men who never
finished high school – a disproportionate number of whom are black or Latino.

“For this segment of
the population,
already acutely
disadvantaged to
begin with, serving
time in prison became
commonplace.”
Bruce Western

The biggest year-to-year drop in the prisoner population since the buildup began
has been 1.8 percent, from 2011 to 2012.23 At that rate, according to the
Sentencing Project, it would take until 2101, or nearly a century, to bring the
prisoner population down to the level it was in 1980 before the most punitive laws
were passed.24 Moreover, according to projections by the Pew Charitable Trusts
published in 2014, the country is not even headed in the right direction in the
short term. Pew projects that state prison populations are expected to grow by
about three percent by 2018.25
Standing in stark contrast to this reality is the ambition of #cut50, the campaign
that Van Jones is leading. Their goal is to reduce the prisoner population by half
in the next ten years. Viewed in the light of history, that might seem like a modest
goal. A return to the low and stable rate of incarceration rate that existed before
the buildup would require cutting the prisoner population by roughly 85 percent.
What happened to create the carceral state that exists today? As conveyed in the
National Academies report, the mainstream historical account typically begins
with President Nixon’s war on crime and drugs, as a reaction to actual rises in

“[T]he sense that bad
guys were being let
off on mere
technicalities created
a climate of political
vengefulness, ferocity,
whatever you might
like, that’s had
disastrous
consequences in the
United States.”
James Whitman

The Sentencing Project (2005). Incarceration and Crime: A Complex Relationship.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_iandc_complex.pdf.
22
The Sentencing Project (2016). U.S. Prison Population Trends 1999-2014. http://www.sentencingproject.org/detail/news.cfm?news_id=1987&id=107.
23 The Sentencing Project. (2013). U.S. Prison Population Declines for Third Consecutive Year. http://sentencingproject.org/detail/news.cfm?news_id=1720.
24 Ibid.
25 The Pew Charitable Trusts. (2014). States Project 3 Percent Increase In Prisoners by 2018. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/multimedia/datavisualizations/2014/states-project-3-percent-increase-in-prisoners-by-2018.
21

12

crime and, more broadly, to the sweeping social changes and unrest of the 1960s.
Policies became tougher under President Reagan with the passage in 1984 of the
Comprehensive Crime Control Act that paved the way for harsh federal
sentencing guidelines. Given the bi-partisan spirit that characterizes current
interest in criminal justice reform, it is worth noting that Senator Ted Kennedy
and other liberal Democrats initially championed guidelines as a way to make the
system fairer, but conservatives gained control of the process and produced a set
of guidelines that essentially required long sentences for a host of crimes
regardless of mitigating factors.
States began passing their own punitive laws in the 1980s, a trend that was
accelerated in 1994 by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,
better known as the Crime Bill.26 The largest single piece of criminal justice
legislation in history, it provided financial incentives for states to expand police
departments, pass tough-on-crime sentencing laws, and build prisons. State
legislatures pursued so-called truth-in-sentencing reforms designed to ensure that
offenders spent more of their sentence behind bars. States also curtailed or even
abolished parole, established mandatory minimum sentences, and passed three
strikes-type laws that required especially stiff penalties for repeat offenders.
At the local level, aggressive law enforcement, which gained considerable support
under the “Broken Windows Theory” of policing, and equally aggressive
prosecution, sent greater numbers of people to jail for minor crimes. Jails across
the country now process 11.7 million admissions annually, many involving
individuals who cycle in and out of jail, a significant proportion of whom are
mentally ill.27 A combination of rising bail amounts, greater reluctance among
judges to release defendants using mechanisms other than bail, and backlogged
criminal courts also mean that people who have not been convicted of a crime are
routinely stuck in jail for days, weeks or even months.28
Importantly, states and the federal government continued to pass punitive policies
– some of which have been curtailed in recent years – even as crime rates
nationally were declining.29 In particular, by the time the 1994 Crime Bill became
law, rates of both violent and property crimes were already on the decline. Only
drug crimes as measured by arrests continued to increase.30

26

Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/billfs.txt.
Subramanian, Ram. (2015). Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America. Vera Institute of Justice.
28 Ibid.
29 Eckholm, Erik. (2015). In a Safer Age, U.S. Rethinks Its ‘Tough on Crime’ System: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/us/with-crime-down-us-faces-legacyof-a-violent-age-.html.
30
The Growth of Incarceration in the United States (2014).
27

13

Source: National Research Council. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and
Consequences. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2014.

It is tempting to conclude, as many people did and some still do, that locking up
ever larger numbers of offenders is what triggered and sustained the steady
decline in crime. But a significant body of research analyzed in the National
Academies’ report casts doubt on that assumption, and the report concludes that
the effect is unlikely to have been large. Michael Tonry, a distinguished professor
at the University of Minnesota and expert on comparative law and policy, also
points out that over the same time period crime rates plummeted in many
countries that did not implement the kind of extremely punitive policies prevalent
in the United States.
Referring to the legislators who passed such punitive laws, Glenn Loury reminded
everyone at the Roundtable that blame for the buildup is widely shared. Loury, a
distinguished professor of social sciences and economics at Brown University,
wondered whether some kind of truth and reconciliation process would be both
healing and conducive to meaningful and lasting change.

“A lot of people have
blood on their hands.”
Glenn Loury

Section III - Punishment through the Lens of History: Racism in America
Cataloging the punitive policies that took shape in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s
does not explain why those policies had such appeal. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a
professor of history and director of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black
Culture, urged the Roundtable members to look deeper into American history to
understand the essence of why America is so punitive. As early as the 17th
century, leading Puritan ministers equated sin with blackness and virtue with
whiteness, Muhammad explained. For most of this country’s history, according to
Muhammad, “every generation of criminal justice advocates have used, to varying
degrees, racial disparity in criminal offending by blacks based on the available

“The idea of black
criminality is
embedded in the
cultural DNA of the
country.”
Khalil Gibran Muhammad

14

facts: colonial witness testimony, antebellum newspaper accounts, or more
recently, modern uniform crime reports.”31
Near the turn of the 20th century, according to Muhammad, many of the nation’s
pioneering demographers and statisticians built an enduring framework for how to
study and understand differences between blacks and whites in all spheres of life
– health, education, family, housing, jobs, and crime and punishment. This
approach, in turn, consistently reconfirmed the view that black people are trapped
by inherent or learned pathologies. In this view, these early studies contributed to
policies that resulted in black people being subject to heightened law enforcement
and more punitive punishment. They also provided support for the “nothing
works” philosophy that ended meaningful investment in rehabilitation for
offenders of all races. Simply citing data in the absence of understanding this
historical context, he contends, is dangerous (See: “Lessons from History” in the
text box below).

“America didn’t face a
crime problem that was
racialized; it faced a
race problem that was
criminalized.”
Naomi Murakawa

Lessons from History
In his recent study on the history of The Black Child-Savers, Geoffrey Ward explains how “history offers distinct insight
into the phenomenon of race effects, a term researchers use in data analysis to characterize the statistical significance of
race variables (e.g., the race of the accused or victim.” The past “reveals dimensions and mechanisms of race relations,
including how racial ideology, politics and structures took shape and changed over time in this institutional context.” Ward
argues a particular compelling case, using the changing demographics of youth confinement since the 19th century. Racial
disparity was close to zero or non-existent in the 1880s at the dawn of legalized segregation or the Jim Crow period. White
youth represented nearly 90% of the confined juvenile population as compared to non-white at 10%. By the dawn of the
20th century, fifty years after the Civil Rights movement, the numbers had swung dramatically in the opposite direction.
Non-white youth represented more than 60% of the confined population as compared to just under 40% for white youth.
Without an appreciation for history, some researchers might explain this shift as evidence of greater delinquency rather
than changing policy. After all, the shift happened coincident to the expansion of racial democracy in the mid-20th century.
In this formulation there would be no context for measuring punitiveness beyond disproportionate minority confinement.
Since many researchers until recently have assumed that racism is less of a driver of punitiveness the closer one gets to
the present, the salient interpretation would be that behavior drove the shift. – Excerpt from Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s
Discussion Paper

Naomi Murakawa, a professor of African American studies, argues that the
conventional narrative about the rise of mass incarceration is truncated and
backwards: It did not start with Nixon’s war on crime and drugs; it started much
earlier. Building on this perspective, Muhammad points to the following lessons
of history, culled from a growing body of scholarship in this area – lessons that in
his view show that the country is still struggling with its racial history.
Under the regime of slavery, enslaved individuals as well as freed blacks were
usually punished outside the formal penal system, typically in capricious and
brutal ways – most notably through the use of lynching and the threat of it (See:
the following text box: “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial

“Whiteness is inseparable
from definitions of
citizenship and
punishment in the United
States.”
Khalil Gibran Muhammed
Khalil Muhammad

31

Unpublished paper by Khalil Gibran Muhammad (2015). The Long Arm of the Past: Historical and Racial Perspectives on American Punitiveness. All additional
references not listed here taken from Roundtable proceedings or paper.

15

Terror”32). That changed once slavery was abolished, although not for the better.
American history from Reconstruction to the present shows how the criminal
justice system was used to control the black population, tactics that by and large
the public supported. Calls for punitive criminal justice policies in both the south
and the north were often explicit or barely concealed appeals to white voters
discomfited by the erosion of race privilege or the conditions of poverty and
crime that characterized communities where blacks typically lived. Even as later
criminal justice laws were race neutral in language to comply with higher
constitutional standards, they were anti-black in enforcement. In this way,
Muhammad explains, elected officials and the public perpetuated racism in
America while consigning stereotypical racist figures to the past.

“We’ve always had racist
public opinion, but we
haven’t always had mass
incarceration.”
Marie Gottschalk

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror
This recent report by Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) titled, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,
documents how the end of the Civil War launched the racial terror of lynching, which is the murder of an alleged offender
with or without a trial, in the United States, particularly in the South. In order to maintain racial control and segregation,
people in Southern states utilized lynching. The EJI states “[r]acial terror lynching was a tool used to enforce Jim Crow laws
and racial segregation – a tactic for maintaining racial control – by victimizing the entire African American community.”
According to the EJI, “terror lynchings peaked between 1880 and 1940 and claimed the lives of African men, women, and
children who were forced to endure the fear, humiliation, and barbarity of this widespread phenomenon unaided.”
Perpetrators of these horrific acts of violence have never been held accountable for their actions and nearly all lynchings
were conducted without a legal conviction. Of all the lynchings committed after 1900, only one percent of lynchers had
been criminally convicted. Lynchings reinforced racial inequality and the legacy of racial segregation and subordination
for years to come. The EJI report, the most comprehensive published to date on the topic, confirms 3959 lynchings
committed between 1877 and 1950, documenting lynchings of black people in twelve Southern states. “[M]ore than eight
in 10 American lynchings between 1889 and 1918 occurred in the South, and more than eight in ten of the nearly 1400
legal executions…since 1976 have been in the South” with a disproportionate amount of those executed being African
American. Many of these individuals were murdered for infinitesimal offenses, such as accidently bumping into a white
woman. When the era of lynching ended in the mid-twentieth century, capital punishment took over as a form of lethal
punishment applied disproportionately to African American men and is described by the report as “a direct descendent of
lynching.” The many legacies of racial terror have yet to be addressed. The South still holds more monuments to the
Confederacy than to those thousands who died in the terror lynchings. The suffering experienced by the African American
community must be “engaged, heard, recognized, and remembered before society can recover from mass violence.”

It is this very severing of the past from the present, Muhammad argues, that
allowed most people to overlook for more than three decades the racist intent and
effects of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, for example. Society today tends to address
racism in the criminal justice system by comparing racism that existed during the
segregation era. This comparison leads to a misconception of the extent to which
we are racist today, as we tend to be more critical of historical actors than
ourselves – thus, justifying our current laws and policies as race neutral. It also
allows people to overlook the creative and hard work by black communities that

32

Equal Justice Initiative (2015). Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror:
http://www.eji.org/files/EJI%20Lynching%20in%20America%20SUMMARY.pdf.

16

helped to lead the country to where we are now, a moment when meaningful
reform of the criminal justice system is a priority.
As important as negative views of blackness have been to the development of
extremely punitive criminal justice policies, prisons and jails today also house
enormous numbers of whites and Latinos. The imprisonment rate for whites is
roughly 400 per 100,000 U.S. residents – that is 2-to-2.5-times higher than
incarceration rates in European countries that we consider our closest cultural
peers.33 University of Pennsylvania Professor Marie Gottschalk, a political
scientist, makes the point that even if every black person held in a U.S. prison or
jail was released, there would still be a mass incarceration crisis in this country.
Gottschalk argues that those punished as a group, regardless of their race, have
more in common than they do with the rest of America. Noted scholar David
Garland, a professor at NYU Law School, agrees. “It’s the enormous social
distance between us, the privileged, and them, the lower classes,” he says, “that
enables mass incarceration.”
Glenn Loury also emphasizes that racial disparities in punishment are mirrored by
racial disparities in victimization. “The state has an obligation to protect people of
color, yet we continue to be unsuccessful in that.” David Garland agrees. Why is
it, he asks, that we still haven’t addressed the high levels of violence in America
that continue to claim the lives of mostly young, black men?

“Even if racism got us into
the problem, it doesn’t
follow that the best way to
frame the complaint is
around race. ‘Black lives
matter,’ yes, but wouldn’t
cases of brutality of whites
in combination make a
stronger argument and lead
to real change?”
Glenn Loury

“[I]t’s the astonishing
levels of stratification and
inequality in this country,
and the remarkably brutal
treatment of the poor,
many of whom are people
of color.”
David Garland

Section IV - American Exceptionalism: A Comparative Approach
Although the United States accounts for about five percent of the world’s
population, it houses nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.34 In terms of
incarceration rates, the magnitude of the difference between America and other
countries is astounding.
According to statistics published in 2013 by the International Centre for Prison
Studies and highlighted in the National Academies Report, at 707 inmates per
100,000 U.S. residents, the incarceration rate in America is more than four-and-ahalf times the United Kingdom’s rate of 148. In Canada, another natural
comparison, the rate is 118. Most western European countries have even lower
rates. The rate in France is 100; in Germany it’s 77. Rates in the four
Scandinavian countries, which according to Stockholm University Professor
Vanessa Barker, could be described as “Nordic exceptionalism,” range from 73 to
58. The only developed country with a rate of incarceration anywhere close to
where the U.S. stands now is Russia, with 474 prisoners per 100,000 residents.

33
34

“[W]hen I look at
the United States
and incarceration,
the war on drugs, is
the prime suspect. I
think [it’s] one of
the prime causal
factors driving these
mass incarceration
rates.”
Jan De Keijser

Gottschalk, Marie. Jacobin Magazine. It’s Not the Drug War. March 5, 2015: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/mass-incarceration-war-on-drugs/.
The Growth of Incarceration in the United States (2014).

17

What’s driving these differences? Simply put, incarceration has become a
common form of punishment in America, even for many first-time and nonviolent
offenders, and prison sentences are much longer. European countries, according
to Jan de Keijser, a professor of political science at the Institute of Criminal Law
and Criminology in The Netherlands, rely much less on incarceration as a form of
punishment. Moreover, it’s almost unheard of to sentence anyone to more than 20
years in prison, and typical sentences are considerably shorter. In Germany and
the Netherlands, between 91 and 95 percent of all prisoners are sentenced to two
years or less and 75% of those have their sentences suspended leaving very few
who actually serve time in prison. By contrast, the average stay in American
prisons is 3 years.35 According to James Whitman, the Ford Foundation Professor
of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, in Europe, defendants are
considered “particularly troubled and challenging social welfare state clients”
rather than irredeemable individuals.36
While not disputing these facts, David Garland cautions against simplistic
international comparisons. An expert in socio-legal studies, Garland argues that
what’s needed are more complex international studies that explore different types
and rates of punishment in the context of different types and rates of crime. The
high rates of homicide and gun violence in the United States are unusual in the
world, he emphasizes. The purpose of such research, Garland argues, is not to
justify harsh punishment but to better understand the underlying social problems
and develop solutions that are more effective than harsh punishment.
Those who craft and administer criminal justice policies in the United States have
long been reluctant to explore the alternative policies and philosophies of
European systems. Today, however, there are clear signs of curiosity about and
openness to ideas from across the Atlantic. Toward the end of his tenure as
director of the Vera Institute of Justice, Michael Jacobson who now runs the
Institute for State and Local Governance at CUNY, brought a small group of

“[I]f you're going to
have real
rehabilitation or
individualized
treatment, or a
presumption of
mercy, you really
have to see the people
who are in prison as
human beings.”
Anne-Marie Cusac

“Under [European]
human rights law,
every person has
inherent dignity, which
includes being able to
imagine a better life,
and when you put
someone in prison for
the rest of his or her
life, that’s no longer
possible. It’s simply
wrong to take a
person’s life away.”
Michael Tonry

35

Subramanian, R and Shames, A. (2013) Sentencing and prison practices in Germany and the Netherlands: Implications for the United States. New York: Vera
Institute of Justice.
36 Unpublished paper by James Q. Whitman (2015). Presumption of Innocence or Presumption of Mercy?: Weighing Two Western Modes of Justice. Additional
references not listed here taken from Roundtable proceedings or paper.

18

senior corrections administrators to visit prisons in Germany and The
Netherlands.
In recalling the experience, John Wetzel, Commissioner of Corrections for the
state of Pennsylvania, later wrote in an opinion piece published in the National
Journal: “For those of us who visited Germany and The Netherlands, the approach
to sentencing and the prison philosophy we saw astonished and inspired us. Not
only are far fewer people imprisoned, but even those who have committed serious
violent crimes serve far shorter sentences. … Prison policies grounded in the
belief that prisoners should be treated with dignity were startlingly effective—and
have eminently pragmatic implications here at home.”37
It would not be the first time the United States attempted such a shift. In 1967,
prior to the prison boom and while crime rates were on the rise, the Commission
on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice established by President
Lyndon Johnson recommended retooling America’s correctional facilities to
promote rehabilitation as a way to reduce crime. But just as that project got
underway, political and public commitment to rehabilitation evaporated, replaced
by the view that “nothing works,” a pessimism that spread rapidly and proved to
be impervious even to credible research demonstrating the opposite.

“We have to recognize
that it’s always easier to
tap into negative
emotions like anger and
vengeance than to apply
reason and restraint.
We have to constantly
ask ourselves, What if I
had committed a crime?
What if I were in
prison? And that's very
hard to do in the United
States where the
political rhetoric is
mostly about 'us' and
'them.’”
Sonja Snacken

A wide body of psychological research documents the human tendency to judge
and punish others harshly. As psychologist Mark Fondacaro points out, when
people perceive that someone has harmed them, they retaliate. Moreover,
neuroscience shows that the act of punishing is satisfying, at least in terms of
basic brain chemistry – it activates the dorsal striatum, a subcortical region of the
brain associated with anticipation of reward. The same mechanisms are at play
even when someone is not the victim but is punishing as a third-party.38 Judge
Morris B. Hoffman has coined this response as “the punisher’s brain.”

“People blame,
that’s clear. But
do they want
retribution?”

Public opinion surveys also reveal widespread punitive attitudes. Even in The
Netherlands, for example, roughly 80 percent of people surveyed believe
sentences for offenders are too lenient, according to Jan de Keijser. “This is true
today and has been true for decades.” Public opinion has remained consistent over
time even when actual sentences became tougher and even as members of the
public consistently express strong confidence in the justice system. “So their
views don’t add up,” he says.

“We don’t allow the
death penalty, not
because we don’t
believe there are truly
heinous crimes, but
because we believe that
applying the death
penalty would lower
both the offender’s and
our own dignity.”

Maria Hartwig, a professor of psychology at John Jay College, has conducted
research on social judgments here in the United States and in her native Sweden.
According to Hartwig, even people who believe in harsh punishment and want it
applied in response to a particular crime are not actually satisfied by it afterwards.
It feels somehow empty.

Maria Hartwig

Sonja Snacken

37

Turner, Nicholas, Wetzel, John. Treating Prisoners With Dignity Can Reduce Crime. National Journal, May 22, 2014.
Unpublished paper by Mark R. Fondacaro and Megan J. O’Toole (2015). Psychological Perspectives on Punishment: Retributive and Consequentialist Responses
to Crime. Additional references not listed here taken from Roundtable proceedings or paper.
38

19

Courts throughout Europe – in particular the European Court of Human Rights –
function to restrain both the individual urge to punish harshly and the ability of
politicians to leverage such sentiments, however superficial they might be. Sonja
Snacken, a professor at Vrije University in Brussels, studies the nexus between
punishment and human rights law and has been involved for many years in setting
standards and monitoring prison conditions in Europe. According to her, the
central question from a human rights perspective is: Do we want to grant human
rights to people who have violated our rights? Corrections officers in Norway, for
example, are taught that treating prisoners humanely is something they should do
for their own good, because a pattern of callous or brutal treatment will negatively
affect their own lives, families and communities (See: “Contrasting Approaches
for Maximum Security”39).
Contrasting Approaches to Maximum Security
The United States is an outlier in another important way: The nature of incarceration is altogether different here. The
March 29 issue of the New York Times Magazine included not one, but two articles on prison and the culture of
confinement. Offenders confined in the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, known as ADX, “spend their
days in 12-by-7-foot cells with thick concrete walls and double sets of sliding metal doors (with solid exteriors, so
prisoners cannot see one another). A single window, about three feet high but only four inches wide, offers a notched
glimpse of sky and little else.” A slot in the interior cell door offers practically the only opportunity for contact with other
people. Former warden Robert Hood has described it as a “clean version of hell.” Lawyers representing ADX prisoners
have argued that the conditions literally drive people crazy – and not in the garden variety way in which the word
“crazy” often implies, but in deeply disturbing ways that would shock anyone with a conscience. The lawsuit itself is
emblematic of a growing consensus in the United States that solitary confinement is indeed so damaging it truly should
be a last resort or even banned – not an easy task in America where correctional facilities tend to be large, typically
bereft of rehabilitative programs and other meaningful activities, and increasingly filled with mentally ill people who
often pose a risk to themselves or others. A concrete wall surrounds Norway’s Halden Prison, also reserved for the most
serious and dangerous offenders, but life inside is designed to resemble, as much as possible, the features of normal
life on the outside. Rather than a barren yard, the buildings abut a blueberry forest. The furnishings are hardly stylish
but neither are they bolted to the floor or otherwise obviously fitted specifically for a prison. Prisoners live in communal
housing units, shop for fresh food and prepare their own meals in kitchens where the equipment includes several sharp
knives. At Halden, the deprivation of liberty is viewed as punishment enough; anything more punishing would not only
be excessive but also counterproductive to the goal of reintegrating prisoners back into society. Life sentences have
been outlawed in Norway and most other European countries. “Better out than in” is the unofficial motto of the
Norwegian Correctional Service. Halden was built after reintegration became a priority, and “every aspect of the facility
was designed to ease psychological pressures, mitigate conflict and minimize interpersonal friction.” Although roughly
half the prisoners were convicted of violent crimes, violence inside the prison, among the 251 inmates or between
inmates and staff, is very rare. Supermax prisons like ADX were designed to provide confinement in its most punishing
form on the theory that lifers have little or no incentive to behave. But many scholars and others point out that living
conditions in many, if not most, U.S. correctional facilities would strike most observers as inhuman – if average
Americans had any opportunity to observe life in prison, that is.

“In Europe, the answer is clear,” Snacken says. “Courts confirm and protect the
basic dignity and human rights of offenders even in the face of opposing public
opinion.” The “never again” conviction that flows from reckoning with mass
atrocities committed during the Second World War has a strong influence on the
39

Jessica Benko, The New York Times (March 26, 2015). The Radical Humaneness of Norway's Halden Prison.

20

nature of punishment, she explains. Scientific evidence about the damaging
effects of incarceration, along with the ability of Europeans to promote victims’
rights without tying those rights to harsh punishment for offenders, has also
helped to sustain a human rights perspective on criminal justice policy, according
to Snacken. “European courts have no problem striking down laws that create the
possibility of a life sentence,” Michael Tonry emphasizes. David Green, a
Professor of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, points out
that Europeans never lose focus of the “ultimate goal of eventual reentry and
integration into society.”
Nick Turner who directs the Vera Institute of Justice, an institution known for its
rigorous empirical research, agrees. Turner notes that the recidivism rate in
Norway, for example, is not much different than the rate in the United States, yet
Halden prison, which is reserved for the most serious offenders in Norway, is
much more humane than any correctional facility in the United States. Marie
Gottschalk argues that the problem is even deeper than that. “It’s not just that
we’ve stopped caring about prisoners and their interests, there’s a whole segment
of the population that we’ve never cared about.”

“It’s about doing
what’s right for this
particular problem,
but connecting the
crime and
punishment issue to
the larger society.”
Vanessa Barker

California’s Populist Approach to Punishment
California’s prison population increased by 500% between 1980 and 1995 because of the punitive “voter-approved laws.”
The prisons became so overcrowded that the U.S. Supreme Court had to declare them inhumane. This judgment brought
to light the issue of who should be going to prison. “On November 4, 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47, a law
that changes certain low-level crimes like drug possession and petty theft offenses from potential felonies to
misdemeanors. This will reduce incarceration costs, and those savings will be invested (via grants) into drug treatment
and mental health services for people in the criminal justice system, programs for at-risk students in K-12 schools, and
victim services.” California’s legislative analysts predict that the state’s annual felony conviction rate will drop by 40,000
and the state and local governments will save hundreds of millions of dollars. According to Adam Gelb, director of the Pew
Charitable Trusts Public Safety Performance Project, Proposition 47 was passed by a wide margin (over 58 percent), “sends
a strong message to policymakers across the country that people are sick and tired of the old debate between treatment
and punishment.” This is a groundbreaking step towards reducing punitiveness.

Criminal justice policy in the United States is a populist issue, James Whitman
points out, whereas in Europe it is largely left up to a class of professional
experts. Europeans would rarely, if ever, let voters decide how to punish
offenders as California did in 1994 when the voters passed the infamous three
strikes law, or when they modified that law two years ago through Prop 36 by
creating a path to release for thousands of lifers, or most recently when voters
passed Prop 47 that reclassified many felony offenses as misdemeanor crimes as a

21

way to relieve the state’s overcrowded prisons (See: “California’s Populist
Approach to Punishment”40,41,42,43).
James Whitman also believes that the emphasis on innocence in American
jurisprudence – if not in actual criminal cases – ironically makes it harder to
equally protect the rights of the guilty. In his view, it is as if allegiance to due
diligence and the ideals of justice abruptly end once someone is convicted. The
fact that roughly 95 percent of all criminal cases in America are resolved through
plea-bargaining, with prosecutors rather than judges controlling the process, only
heightens the potential for excess and abuse in the realm of punishment.
Michael Tonry, whose scholarship spans the United States and Europe, describes
the United States as an outlier in terms of the “flimsy process” through which
people are sent to prison. “When we took judges out of the picture and moved
from indeterminate to determinate sentencing, people stopped empathizing with
offenders and gave up trying to apply a punishment that reflects that individual’s
life circumstances and capacity for change,” he says. It’s an irony of history,
University of Pennsylvania Professor Stephen Morse points out, that the shift to
determinant sentencing was motivated initially to make the system fairer, less
subject to racial bias in particular. Judge Hoffman suspects that punishment has
“exploded” in the United States precisely because of the impersonal way the
system now operates. “Maybe we’re not getting as much satisfaction from it as we
used to?”
For all these reasons, Michael Tonry believes it is essential to frame the American
debate about mass incarceration in more than just instrumental terms, such as
saving money or reducing recidivism. “The harsh laws we have today weren’t
created by crunching numbers to produce a cost-benefit analysis,” he says, “They
were created because people believed that harsh punishment was the right
approach, or because the rights of offenders didn’t matter, or didn’t matter as
much as the rights of victims.” In other words, however flawed or offensive such
arguments might sound to some ears, they are principled, moral arguments and it
will take the same kind of arguments to undo those laws in any meaningful way.
In her recently published book, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of
American Politics, Marie Gottschalk argues that instrumental arguments for
reform have built in flaws. A narrow focus on cost-savings, in particular, helps to
fuel what she describes as a “race to the bottom.” In the wake of the Great
Recession, many states eliminated or reduced programs for prisoners, cut back on
correctional health care, and even slashed food services, she described in a recent
interview. Homicides, assaults, and other acts of violence appear to be on the rise

“The dominance of
personal responsibility
slash retributivism
among American
criminal law
professionals and law
professors is
extraordinary these
days.”
James Whitman

[O]ne of the ways to
get at the macro is to
start with the micro,
and start a kind of
worm’s eye view of
these things.”
Shadd Maruna

40

California Department of Corrections (September 1997). Historical Trends: Institution and Parole Population, 1976-1996.
My Prop 47. (2016). About Proposition 47. http://myprop47.org/about/.
42 Krisberg, B. (2014). Prop 47: As California Goes, So Goes the Nation. http://www.thecrimereport.org/viewpoints/2014-11-prop-47-as-california-goes-so-goesthe-nation.
43 Domanick, J. (2014). The Message of California’s Prop 47. http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2014-11-the-message-of-californiasprop-47.
41

22

in federal penitentiaries and in some state prisons as staff positions go unfilled
due to budget cuts.44 Gottschalk also believes the potential for financial savings is
overstated. “States spend roughly two-to-three percent of their budgets on
corrections, about half of what they spend on highways. Yes, costs have been
rising, second only to Medicaid, but it’s still a drop in the bucket,” she says.
Unless Americans base reform of the criminal justice system on deeper principles
and goals, incarceration could expand again when states have more money,
especially if there’s an accompanying rise in crime.
It is important to remember, Sonja Snacken points out, that the strong human
rights laws in Europe limiting punishment do not mean that people in Europe like
offenders. The logical next step, according to Shadd Maruna, Dean and Professor
of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, is to broaden the
conversation to talk with the punished and not just about them. Right now,
Maruna says, we’re “touching different parts of the elephant, but the elephant
itself is still invisible.”

Section V - The Psychology of Punishment: On Blame and Responsibility
Among the scholars who gathered at John Jay College in April, the issues of
culpability, responsibility, and the designation of blame were discussed at length
and sparked a particularly animated debate.
There is a large body of research connecting trauma in childhood to a range of
adverse consequences, from low achievement in school to chronic disease in
adulthood. The Boston study, described in the text box below, draws a clear line
between childhood trauma and incarceration, a finding that Western believes
raises an ethical dilemma: “To be something other than cruel, the punitive
impulse must be directed at those acting with full moral agency,” Western says.45

“Most of us know
people who are trying
to stay out of trouble,
and are talking about
making good
decisions, or are
talking about the bad
decisions that they’ve
made.”
Mark Fondacaro

44

Gottschalk, Marie. It’s Not Just the Drug War, Progressive Narratives about What’s Driving Mass Incarceration Don’t Quite Add Up. Jacobin Magazine, March
5, 2015.
45 Unpublished paper by Bruce Western (2015). Recent Trends in Punitive Criminal Justice in the United States. Additional references not listed here taken from
Roundtable proceedings or paper.

23

The Boston Reentry Study
Bruce Western, a professor of sociology and director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy
School of Government, is one of three scholars leading a small-scale intensive study of what happens to people after they
leave prison. The Boston Reentry Study tracks 122 men and women who were released from state prisons to Boston
neighborhoods between 2012 and 2013. One of the most salient of the study’s findings so far is the prevalence and
magnitude of childhood trauma among the 122 participants. More than 4 out of 10 reported witnessing a homicide;
roughly a third bear the second-hand scars of domestic violence; and half were physically abused by parents or other
adults. One of the participants in Western’s study, known to the researchers as “Luis,” recalls his mother beating him with
wire cables in an effort to instill discipline. She herself suffered from depression, was unemployed throughout Luis’s
childhood, and was married to a man addicted to heroin. Luis watched several times as paramedics worked to revive his
stepfather “Carlos” after he overdosed on heroin. The surrounding neighborhood provided little respite. It too was marked
by uncertainty punctuated by violence. Luis witnessed his first murder at the tender age of 10. He was arrested for the
first time four years later for assaulting a police officer and was expelled from school as a result. It was the beginning of a
life lived as often behind bars as not.

Like Bruce Western, a growing number of scholars believe that a change needs to
occur in how criminal responsibility is determined. The assigned punishments
need to be expanded beyond retrospective judgments about what a defendant was
or was not thinking at the time of the alleged crime and incorporating the
biological, psychological and social factors that influenced the person’s actions.
According to Mark Fondacaro, a century of research on the causes and
consequences of human behavior suggests that something other than rational
deliberation influences the majority of human behavior, crime included.46 Despite
these findings, at present, there is an “evil doer theory of crime,” which posits that
those who commit a crime are guilty both by the act and decision, also known as
mens rea, to commit a crime (See: “The Guilty Mind”47,48,49).

“The idea is not
that punishment is
somehow built into
the human
condition, it’s that
blame is built in,
not punishment.”
Douglas N. Husak

Such findings upend fundamental concepts of metaphysics and morality,
according to Jonathan Jacobs, a professor of philosophy at John Jay College.50 To
complicate matters, even the concept of rationality is subjective, according to
Alan Page Fiske. A psychological anthropologist and professor at UCLA, Fiske
emphasizes that people who commit crimes, even violent crimes, are almost
always acting within their own moral framework, and often trying to right a
perceived wrong committed against them. Such an understanding, according to
Fiske, implies that we might punish somone less harshly or that we do not punish
them at all.

46

Unpublished paper by Mark Fondacaro (2015). Psychological Perspectives on Punishment: Retributive and Consequentialist Responses to Crime. Additional
references not listed here taken from Roundtable proceedings or paper.
47
DeBonis, Mike. The Issue That Could Keep Congress from Passing Criminal Justice Reform. Washington Post. January 20, 2016.
48 Kaiser, Matthew G. WLF Overcriminalization Timeline: Mens Rea, Public Welfare Offenses, and Responsible Corporate Officer Doctrine. The WLF Legal Pulse.
November 16, 2015.
49 The New York Times. Trial Judge to Appeals Court: Review Me. July 16, 2012.
50 Unpublished paper by Jonathan Jacobs (2015). Punitiveness: A Philosophical Perspective. Additional references not listed here taken from Roundtable
proceedings or paper.

24

The Guilty Mind
For most crimes, the prosecutor and jury must determine the defendant’s “willful intent” to break the law – otherwise
known as mens rea or guilty mind. This concept has become a critical issue in political debate and on January 20, 2015,
The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony for what has become a main obstacle in passing the bipartisan bill to
reduce sentences for non-violent federal offenses. Congress must decide to what degree prosecutors must prove a
defendant’s criminal intent in order to win convictions for certain federal crimes. Since its inception, the concept of mens
rea within the federal system has been severely eroded. Congress has passed many statutes that create federal crimes
with no explicit mens rea requirement or do not require a guilty mind at all. A study in social science research analyzing
the proposed (excluding violence, drugs, guns, pornography, or immigration) legislations of the 109th congress found that
446 new federal crimes were proposed and of those proposed, 57% did not have an adequate mens rea requirement and
23 of them ultimately became law. For example, The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Park, created criminal liability
for a corporate officer who was responsible for the conduct of any employee, even those she was unaware of. Mens rea
has earned many individuals a seat in federal prison for “evil” conduct they unknowingly committed. Perhaps more
alarming is the number of guilty pleas defendants enter, in many cases done in order to receive a lower sentence. In
criminal cases, 97% of federal cases and 94% of state cases are resolved by guilty pleas, reinforcing society’s “evil doer
theory” on crime and the current state of the criminal justice system. A critical question remains: Are the high numbers
of guilty pleas a result of a guilty mind or the result of a draconian criminal justice system?

This body of research has yet to penetrate popular culture or inform criminal
justice policy, however. The tendency to read simple intentionality into behavior,
even when it’s not present, persists. Moreover, when judging the behavior of
others as opposed to our own behavior, Americans tend to overemphasize
interpersonal factors and underemphasize situational factors according to
Fondacaro. And at the level of culture, James Whitman notes that the American
penchant for individualism and myopic focus on personal responsibility help to
fuel both the intensity and scope of punishment in the United States.
Although America’s correctional facilities are largely filled with poor people of
all races, research by Cathy Spatz Widom, a professor at John Jay College and
expert on juvenile crime and the cycle of violence, reveals the strong influence of
racial bias (See: “Our Implicit Racial Bias”51). After controlling for socioeconomic factors, arrest rates among the black youth in her study were higher
than rates among white study participants, even though as a group the white youth
were more likely to self-report engaging in acts of violence. Furthermore,
Fondacaro explains that situational and personal factors of the defendant
contribute to implicit biases in judgment by the jury regarding the culpability and
mens rea of the defendant. The ethical imperative in any society, according to
Douglas Husak, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University who has written
extensively on the morality of criminal law, is to craft laws and policies that rise
above such hard-wired and culturally entrenched responses.

51

“So I think that the
issue of the response
of the institutions to
the individual, and
the way they
determine culpability
and blame, is an
important issue that
we can’t lose sight of
with only a focus on
the individual.”
Cathy Spatz Widom

Unpublished paper by Mark Fondacaro (2015).

25

Our Implicit Racial Bias
The largest body of research on implicit biases explores the influence of race. Research dating back to 1976 suggests, for
example, that an ambiguous act of aggression such as a shove is likely to be rated more violent when performed by a
black person and also more likely to be attributed to that person’s dispositional characteristics than when a white person
does the shoving. A more recent study showed that mock jurors are more likely to remember information about
aggressive behavior by black defendants and to remember information about mitigating factors when the defendant is
white. At the level of public policy, research by Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt published last year in the journal
Psychological Science found that white Americans are more likely to support punitive criminal justice policies, including
longer prison sentences for minor offenses, when they believe that a greater proportion of those affected are black.
Study participants were presented with photographs of actual prisoners (mug shots) and then asked a series of questions
concerning their beliefs about punishment. Those who had viewed mostly black faces were more likely to support harsh
punishment compared to those who had viewed a more balanced mix of black and white faces.

Hopes that younger Americans are less biased than their parents’ or grandparents’
generations are not borne out in research. With the exception of interracial dating,
studies show that members of the Millennial Generation, people born after 1980,
hold many of the same explicit and implicit racial biases as the previous two
generations, Generation X and the Baby Boomers.52 While racial biases and builtin tendencies to judge others harshly are not easily undone, they can be trumped
by other factors. When Shadd Maruna was teaching at Cambridge University in
England, he directed along with Anna King the Cambridge University Public
Opinion Project, which specifically sought to unpack opinions about punishment.
They found that when people had more information on which to base their
opinions, beliefs about a person’s culpability, or blame-worthiness, were less
indicative of punitive attitudes than were beliefs about whether or not the person
could change. “In terms of punishment, peoples’ views are more about the future
than the past,” Maruna notes optimistically.
Howard Zehr is widely known as the “grandfather” of the growing field of
restorative justice. Restorative justice aims to meet the needs of victims and hold
offenders accountable in ways that are meaningful and healing for both parties.
Research in the social sciences supports the use of restorative justice, finding that
avoiding punishment rather than inflicting it is more likely to lead to emotional
wellbeing for the punisher. Zehr emphasizes that accountability and responsibility
function very differently than blame. Blame is something that is applied to
someone else; responsibility is something that an individual chooses. The former
is passive, the latter active and that distinction makes all the difference, especially
for individuals whose life circumstances have provided very little opportunity for
them to make constructive choices, choices that embody and even enlarge their
best qualities as a person. Tom Tyler and his colleague Tracey Meares are both
leading scholars in the field of procedural justice. Their work suggests that
compliance with the law is enhanced when individuals, especially traditionally
excluded minorities, have a voice in the process, are treated fairly by legal

“The model we’re using,
threats and imprisonment,
is fundamentally wrong.
We have to change our
understanding of the
factors that matter at every
stage of the process.”
Tom Tyler

“There’s very little
good research on how
to undo implicit biases,
especially because
talking about biases
can actually make the
problem worse.”
Maria Hartwig

[I]'d like to get
rid of blame and
replace it with
responsibility.”
Howard Zehr

52

Clement, Scott. Millennials Are Just About as Racist as Their Elders. Washington Post, April 7, 2015.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/07/white-millennials-are-just-about-as-racist-as-their-parents/.

26

authorities, and view legal institutions as legitimate sources of authority that
reflect their interests.
Glenn Loury has written widely on the interplay between personal responsibility
and larger social forces. In his view, the conversation and mood at the bi-partisan
summit on criminal justice reform in Washington, D.C. a year ago, which he
attended, suggests a significant change in attitude away from blame and harsh
punishment and toward some of the ideas that underlie restorative justice. The
concept was also articulated by Marie Gottschalk, who posited that we need to
move away from individual culpability and focus on social culpability.

“People are no
longer wagging a
finger or a fist but
really trying to
understand how
someone came to
commit the crime
and how that
person might turn
his or her life
around.”

For Laurie Garduque, the dramatic changes in the juvenile justice system,
including a 40-60 percent reduction in juvenile incarceration over 15 years – work
that the MacArthur Foundation supported extensively – provides some hope that a
similar transformation could happen in the much larger system that handles adult
offenders. She also notes that social science research and other forms of
scholarship were essential to transforming the juvenile justice system. Social
science research in the past has shown that vocational training, treatment
programs, and community supervision and corrections is quite effective in
reducing recidivism in the adult population as well. The challenge is clear  to
translate the successes of the juvenile system to the adult system. This is a
question we must grapple with today.

Glenn Loury

Section VI – The Role of Religion: Retribution versus Forgiveness
“The first prisons were monasteries. Monks entered an enclosure for life for the
purpose of spiritual purification and seeking union with the divine,” notes Andrew
Skotnicki, a professor of religion at Manhattan College.53 Moreover, he explains,
it was common for bishops as well as secular magistrates to confine troublesome
clerics or laypersons for the purpose of spiritual purification and moral renewal.
The most influential of these monastic rules, written by St. Benedict in the sixth
century, emphasizes the welfare of the confined person. St. Benedict not only
used incarceration as a last resort, he made certain that wise older monks regularly
visited the prisoner lest he be “devoured by too much sorrow.” Benedict goes on
to say, “let love for him be reaffirmed and let everyone pray for him.”
What is most important about this ancient Christian tradition, according to
Skotnicki, is that confinement was viewed not as retribution for wrongdoing but
as an opportunity for healing and reunion with the larger community of faith. The
rationale was that punishment was applied with the understanding that we are all
sinners and that the difference between the abbot and the wayward monk is
superficial ⎼ at some future point in time, the roles easily could be reversed.

“The pain of being
apart was punishment
enough, no sin is ever
the sinner’s alone; its
endurance harms all
and its cancellation is
the responsibility of
all.”
Andrew Skotnicki

53

Unpublished paper by Andrew Skotnicki (2015). Theological Approaches to Wrongdoing, Punishment, and Forgiveness. Additional references not listed here
taken from Roundtable proceedings or paper.

27

“A restorative justice based upon compassion, rather than retributive justice, is
the dominant approach to culpability found in the Bible," Skotnicki concludes.
Our oldest theological traditions are about accepting people for who they are.
Restorative justice, which views crime as a violation of relationships and justice
as a restoration of communion, is a continuation of this tradition. Such beliefs in
the Judeo-Christian tradition, according to Skotnicki, far outweigh beliefs about a
vengeful God who delivers harsh punishment (See: “A Different Approach to
Punishment”54,55,56).

“Retributivism is not
punitiveness. It
doesn’t mean you
have to be harsh. It
doesn’t mean
anything of the sort.”
Judge Morris B. Hoffman

A Different Approach to Punishment
Views expressed by the religious right are dramatically different today. Prison Fellowship envisions “a future in which
countless prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families, are redeemed, restored, and reconciled through the love and truth
of Jesus Christ.” A number of conservative elected officials are preaching in their own way about second chances for
individuals who commit crimes. “We go to church on Sunday because we pray for second chances. We realize the world
is full of sinners, all of whom can be forgiven in the eyes of their God,” Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy said
recently. “Yet, somehow, in some way, we lost our way. We became more engaged in building prisons and permanent
punishment than we were in permanent reform. We exacted a higher and higher price for the offenses committed by an
individual.” Governor Malloy offered these words in April 2015 as one of the state’s prisons was officially rededicated as
a Community Reintegration Center, reflecting the fact that in Connecticut and nationwide, 90 percent of all people in
prison eventually go home. In February of 2015, Mr. Malloy announced his “Second Chance Society” initiative, proposing
major reform efforts aimed at reducing the number of incarcerated and facilitating the reentry process to increase
former inmates’ prospects to lead a law abiding life.

Though many theologians and other scholars reach this conclusion it does not
prevent people from using religion as a way to justify harsh punishment. David
Garland, an expert in comparative legal studies, notes that the most religious
societies in Europe today are also the most punitive. Similarly, Christian Pfeiffer,
a criminologist based in Germany who also studies trends in the United States,
notes that people living in the American Bible Belt are more likely to support both
corporal punishment for children and very punitive criminal justice policies for
offenders. From a theological perspective, according to Skotnicki, the punished in
both examples serve as scapegoats, “vessels for the punisher’s own sins, feelings
of alienation, and reluctance to be humbled in the eyes of God and community.”
In other words, people project their own fears and insecurities on to offenders and
justify harsh punishment in the name of God.
In her book Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America57, AnneMarie Cusac explores the significant role that religion has played in public debate
about punishment. According to Cusac, evangelical preachers in the 1970s and
1980s recommended corporal punishment; neo Calvinists even used religion to
advocate a return to stoning. Their voices, which were louder than more tolerant
views expressed consistently by Catholics, Lutherans and other religious groups

“Punitivity is learned…
the more you are beaten
by your parents, the
more punitive is your
approach to the world,
because you learn that
behavior is ruled by
punishment.”
Christian Pfeiffer

“We forget that
forgiveness and
mercy are part of
our history too.”
Marie Gottschalk

54

Prison Fellowship (2016). https://www.prisonfellowship.org/archived-pages/prison-ministry/.
Pazniokas, Mark. The Connecticut Mirror. A Connecticut prison is rededicated to sending men home. April 21, 2015.
56 New Haven Register Politics. Malloy proposes ‘second-chance’ measures to reform Connecticut criminal justice. http://www.nhregister.com/government-andpolitics/20150203/malloy-proposes-second-chance-measures-to-reform-connecticut-criminal-justice.
57
Cusac, Anne-Marie. Cruel and unusual: The culture of punishment in America. Yale University Press, 2009.
55

28

helped to establish a generation of very punitive criminal justice policies in the
United States.
Despite all of religion’s potential pitfalls and actual misuses throughout history,
its obvious advantage, according to Andrew Skotnicki, is that a spiritual lens
humanizes any issue and softens the heart, reminding the public that people
collectively make up big numbers like the 2.2 million individuals incarcerated
today58 (See: “A Moral and Spiritual Crisis”59).
A Moral and Spiritual Crisis

“I wonder if we can
have a human rights
discourse in this
country without it
being religious. And
if we can, where is it?
David Green

David Garland

In March 2015, The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander delivered this year’s Women of Spirit Lecture at Union
Theological Seminary in New York City, which is a kind of ground zero for people of faith engaged in social change. In
addressing the crowd at this sold-out event, Alexander argued that no legal strategy or set of policy arguments alone will
end mass incarceration in America. “What we face is a profound moral and spiritual crisis, not merely a failure of public
policy,” she said. Alexander called on people of faith and conscience to “build a new moral consensus in this country, a
revolutionary understanding about who we are as human beings, who we are as children of God and what we owe one
another.” She believes “truly transformative change will come when and only when we change rules, law, policies, and
practices because we have opened our hearts and our minds for the better regarding the dignity and value of all people.”

Section VII – Punishment and Policy: The Power and Limitations of Data
As powerful as the image of “mass incarceration” is, Naomi Murakawa believes it
does not capture the true scope of the problem, or the “big picture,” as she calls it.
Murakawa, a professor of African American Studies at Yale University, prefers to
talk about “mass punishment”60
The enormous number of people locked behind bars in America on any given day
– 2.2 million – pales in comparison to the larger universe of 6.9 million people
under some form of correctional supervision, many of them for misdemeanor
crimes.61 It is not only the sheer number of people under supervision that is
problematic, according to Murakawa, it is also the fact that probation and parole,
initially conceived of as helping agencies, have been repurposed for punitive
purposes.

“So we are in this sad
wasteland where we are
morally untethered and
I think actually it’s a
moment to turn the
critical gaze back on
ourselves, on the social
science that we produce,
that we advertise.”
Naomi Murakawa

Even as more states abolish the death penalty, Americans still serve very long
sentences, often leading to their death in prison.62 According to the Sentencing
Project, one in nine prisoners in the United States, including people convicted as
juveniles, is serving a life sentence, some of them with no possibility of parole. In
58

Skotnicki, (2015)
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. Speech delivered at Union Theological Seminary, NYC on March 4, 2015. https://utsnyc.edu/michellealexanderlive/
60 Unpublished paper by Hannah Walker & Naomi Murakawa (2015). Political and Policy Perspectives on Punishment: No Exit? The Limits of Carceral State
Retrenchment. Additional references not listed here taken from Roundtable proceedings or paper.
61
Lauren E. Glaze and Danielle Kaeble, “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2013,” Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 2014, NCJ
248479.
62 Kehaulani Goo, Sara, 5 Facts about the Death Penalty. Pew Research Center. May 28, 2015.
59

29

recommending that Congress cap federal sentences at 20 years, Sentencing
Project Director Marc Mauer pressed the lawmakers to seriously consider how
much punishment is enough: “What are we trying to accomplish, and where does
redemption come into the picture?”63
Katherine Beckett is a sociology professor at the University of Washington. Her
research encompasses both the macro dynamics of punishment in America and
the individual experience of punishment. Becket emphasizes that many people do
transform themselves in prison – change that is vitally important to how they see
themselves – yet those narratives have not yet reached a wider audience to
influence policy. Beckett believes it is more politically viable to uplift those
narratives and argue for reinstating parole than it is to advocate for shorter
sentences for people convicted of more serious crimes.
In this context, it is important to remember that many Americans have difficulty
accepting once-violent offenders who served their time and are now leading
productive lives. Laws that apply only to people convicted of nonviolent crimes –
such as “ban the box,” laws that prohibit employers from immediately
disqualifying applicants based on their criminal history, and “second chance”
laws that seal criminal records – leave many formerly incarcerated individuals
with broad collateral consequences that function as never-ending punishment.
In the study by Bruce Western previously mentioned (See the Boston Reentry
Study), former prisoners subject to supervision in the community were more
likely to be re-incarcerated, usually for violating a condition of their release rather
than for committing a new crime– a phenomenon well documented in other
research and institutional data.64 In many cases, conditions of probation or parole
are simply at odds with reuniting with family, finding and maintaining work, and
establishing the normal routines of daily life. Some people are even prohibited
from carrying a cellphone.65 Lingering debt associated with arrest, conviction, and
supervision by the criminal justice system also prevents many former offenders
from establishing productive, law-abiding lives in the community (See: “Criminal
Justice Debt: A Long-Term Shackle”66).

“…[W]hy do we cease to
care about people who
are convicted? Why are
they suddenly not objects
of compassion and
sympathy and
identification of any
kind?”
Alan Page Fiske

“Sex offenders can be
treated, many of them,
very effectively in the
community, far more
effectively than in prison.
And I think the public
may take onboard that.”
Julian Roberts

“The prison is
moving beyond
the walls and into
the community…”
Marie Gottschalk

63

Dana Goldstein. Too Old to Commit Crime? The New York Times, March 20, 2015.
Unpublished paper by Bruce Western (2015) and Roundtable discussion.
65 Gottschalk, Marie. Jacobin Magazine.
66 Unpublished paper by Hannah Walker & Naomi Murakawa (2015) and Roundtable discussion. Sorensen, Elaine, Sousa, Liliana, Schaner, Simon (2007).
Assessing Child Support Arrears in Nine Large States and the Nation. Report by the Urban Institute.
64

30

Criminal Justice Debt: A Long-Term Shackle
Having a criminal record limits a person’s employment and educational opportunities, access to affordable housing, and
in many cases, even the right to vote. Involvement with the criminal justice system, even minimally, can also saddle a
person with debt. Across the country, the annual number of misdemeanor arrests skyrocketed over the past 25 years,
disproportionately rounding up poor people, blacks and Latinos. In addition to fines associated with lower-level offenses,
people arrested in some jurisdictions have to pay for their public defender and pay for their probation officer. In some
states, people have to pay for food, lodging and other services they receive while in jail. Those who cannot pay off their
debts are often jailed as a consequence, despite the fact that debtors’ prisons per se have been abolished. According to
Naomi Murakawa, professor of African American Studies at Yale University, the median legal financial obligation nationally
is between $7,200 and $9,100, much of it accrued interest. She describes this debt as a “long-term shackle,” explaining
that even if someone with debt in the median range – and many people are far more indebted – were able to pay $100 a
month, that person would still be indebted 10 years later. The United States imposes fines and fees regardless of a
person’s ability to pay, whereas in Europe, German criminologist Christian Pfeiffer points out, so called day fines are
calibrated to reflect a person’s income. Many commentators have remarked that Walter Scott may have been running
when a North Charleston police officer shot and killed him because he was behind in paying child support and was afraid
of being sent to jail. A 2007 report of child support debt by the Urban Institute found that 7 out of 10 people in arrears
reported less than $10,000 a year in income yet were expected to pay, on average, 83 percent of their income. This
conundrum is one of many that the American criminal justice system seems unable to solve.

If, like Naomi Murakawa, one believes there are already too many people under
supervision by the criminal justice system, efforts to reduce the prisoner
population by expanding alternatives to incarceration may simply be shifting the
locus of the problem rather than solving it. The biggest private-sector prison
companies have become “very nimble political actors,” says Murakawa,
repositioning themselves to provide private probation, parole, electronic
monitoring, drug testing, counseling and other mandated services. The task of
reigning in mass punishment is daunting, according to Murakawa, precisely
because the line between what is considered to be punitive versus rehabilitative –
the prison from its alternative – has become so blurry.
Community-based sentences do have the potential to be humane, effective and, in
some cases, true alternatives to jail and prison, but the use of such alternatives,
according to many scholars, must be accompanied by efforts to rein in the
punishment apparatus writ large. “We need to reinvigorate good old-fashioned
terms like net widening,” Murakawa says, and expand the public health system,
for example, instead of putting more and more people in mandatory treatment
programs.
Professor Stephen J. Morse, whose own scholarship focuses on individual
responsibility and agency, believes there will be substantial resistance to any
effort to “define deviance down.” While that might be true, standards are already
applied unevenly. Both Morse and Gottschalk teach at the University of
Pennsylvania, where according to Gottschalk, the use of drugs is tolerated or
addressed as a public health issue, while seven blocks away off campus the same
behavior will land a person in jail.

“Naomi gives us a vision
of a good society, and
that’s created through
social movements.”
James Morone

“If we’re going to
have a public debate
and try to change
hearts and minds,
we’re going to have
to talk about …
defining deviance
down’”
Stephen J. Morse

31

A distinguished professor of political science and public policy at Brown
University, James Morone points to past eras in which social problems “handled”
through harsh punishment were successfully reframed through a combination of
grassroots organizing and political leadership. Repeal of prohibition under
President Roosevelt is an apt example, he says, of “turning a moral dilemma into
a public health problem.” Building on that idea, Katherine Beckett wonders
whether correctional institutions could be repurposed to fill some of the gaps in
America’s decimated social welfare system.
More than once during the two-day meeting of scholars, David Garland
emphasized that the public and many policy makers profoundly misunderstand
what the criminal justice system can and cannot do. It is a good way to enforce
the letter of the law, according to Garland, but it is a poor way to control crime
and an ineffectual way to address poverty. “We need other systems for that,” he
said.
On the subject of risk assessment tools, which are ascending in currency, Naomi
Murakawa argues that these tools lead many people ever deeper into the criminal
justice system while providing a way out for a comparative few. Murakawa
asserts that black Americans who live in highly policed neighborhoods are more
likely to be arrested and their criminal history puts them in a higher-risk category.
Higher-risk offenders are supervised more closely by probation officers, who are
therefore more likely to detect and punish minor violations, and the cycle
continues. Moreover, according to Murakawa, these tools draw on personal
factors such as employment history and marital status that are influenced by larger
dynamics of race inequality in America.
“Researchers have devised ever more sophisticated statistical models to measure
the extent of black-white disparities in criminal justice,” Marie Gottschalk points
out, while “the deep and complex sources of those disparities and how to alleviate
them often go largely unexamined.” Greater and greater expertise and more and
more data will not always provide the answers. In fact, empirical information may
encourage us to avoid the hard questions about who we are punishing and why,
Murakawa says.
Beyond the antiseptic quality of what Bruce Western refers to as the “elite
technocratic policy conversation,” a narrow focus on data and evidence-based
solutions also raises ethical dilemmas. If the goal is rehabilitation and lowering
the recidivism rate, Dutch political scientist Jan de Keijser asks, is the State then
justified in keeping someone in a program much longer than the amount of time
they would have spent in jail or prison? “Where’s the ‘just desert’ in that”?
For Jonathan Jacobs, such questions underscore the need to apply the particular
rigor of philosophy to criminal justice policy. “Philosophy is thinking that is
relentless,” he says, explaining that it is self-critical and informed by the world.
“Once you have a theory, you’ve stopped thinking.” While the endlessness of
such an approach can seem totally impractical at first glance, it is a useful foil for

“Prisons need to
become part of the
social welfare system,
not exist apart from
it.”
Bruce Western

“Right now we’re
applying scientific
evidence in a
mechanical, antiseptic
way without any
moral underpinning.”
Nick Turner

“People have
become comfortable
with the idea that
basic civility does not
extend to prisoners.”
Jonathan Jacobs

32

the solution-of-the-moment that scholars agree tends to overly influence criminal
justice policy.
De Keijser is just one of several scholars who worry in particular about hooking
reforms to reductions in recidivism. According to Michael Tony, fully two-thirds
of offenders, across all western societies, are likely to get in some kind of trouble
again. Green observes that the slow, deep and self-imposed process of cultivating
individual responsibility is much more important and also much harder to
measure. To convey this and other nuanced aspects of crime and punishment
narratives are needed, according to Anne-Marie Cusac who both teaches
journalism and is a practicing journalist. “Storytelling is a big part of movement
building,” she says, adding that research and data should be strategically inserted
into a personal story to give it broader relevance.

“Rehabilitation is too
easily collapsed into
simple outcomes like
recidivism rates,
which places a target
on its back.”
David Green

Like many of the issues the Roundtable scholars took up, the usefulness of data
and evidence lies somewhere in between all or nothing. “It’s politically unsalable
to simply ignore recidivism rates,” Julian Roberts said. Roberts, a professor of
criminology at Oxford University, is an expert in public attitudes about
punishment. Data of all kinds are important to support legislative change,
according to Todd Clear, the Provost at Rutgers University-Newark with deep
understanding of the reform process. Clear emphasizes that the road to reform is
not one path but 51 paths, reflecting the variety of experiences at the state and
federal level. “Reforms that will make a difference in one state won’t make a dent
in another or in the federal system,” he says. This kind of pragmatic approach, he
argues, is not at all at odds with one grounded in values and aspirations.

Section VIII – Conclusion: An Emerging Movement in a Challenging Time
On the first day of the Roundtable, President Jeremy Travis asked participants to
introduce themselves, state their interest in the issue and their expectations for the
two days ahead. The answers were revealing and at times surprising in their depth
and breadth, ranging from the very obvious, such as the wish to learn more about
what can actually be done, to the more uncommon, such as a professed interest in
the evolutionary roots of punishment. Mostly though, it was remarkable to see a
highly diverse group of scholars eager to learn about their colleagues’ views and
coming together to tackle the issue of punitiveness in America. To be sure, the
scholars’ expectations covered the spectrum from pessimistic to optimistic
attitudes regarding the possibilities of real reform. For some, there was a mix of
emotions, best expressed by Jim Whitman during his introduction: “I’d like to
come out of this meeting feeling more optimistic than I do that things might
change. But I have to say, pessimism is the spirit in which I arrived, so…”

“[W]hat other
practices could we
bring to the table that
would move us
forward?”
Vanessa Barker

While this gathering to explore the question of punitiveness in America may have
been the first of its kind, many of the discussion papers and subsequent
presentations already reflected cross-disciplinary research and thinking. Some
authors referred to their colleagues’ work and referenced their publications
33

demonstrating a comfortable familiarity with their theories and writings. Many
participants ventured into other disciplines in an effort to support an argument,
introduce additional factors or circumstances, or present a more comprehensive
picture. Throughout the two-day meeting, the need for an understanding of the
subject matter beyond any one given discipline was notable and clearly
communicated. The honesty and curiosity with which participants engaged in the
conversation openly demonstrated the potential for scholarly inquiry across
disciplines.
In the afternoon of the second day of the Roundtable convening, Jeremy Travis
took a moment to recapture the essence of the deliberations over the past two days
before posing the, perhaps most difficult, questions to the group: Where do we go
from here? What might a research agenda be? Do we have something that is
sustainable through future convenings? What is the role of the scholarly
community and the value of scholarly inquiry in particular? How do we frame the
issue? How can ideas be translated into policy change?

“[I] wonder if we might
be able to bring people
together to address this
question that’s come up
a lot, which is what do
victims really need and
want? What are they
getting? What are they
not getting? And how
can we begin to bring
them into this
conversation in ways
that are productive.”
Katherine Beckett

Although the gathering was not intended to generate specific recommendations,
toward the end of the meeting the scholars talked about the value of developing a
set of principles to guide the use of punishment, principles rooted in
interdisciplinary scholarship and ones that resonate in but are not bound by the
current political environment. Roundtable participants agreed that what is
significant about the movement to end mass incarceration is that it forces people
to question the very nature of punishment in America: who we punish, what we
punish, how and why.

“We need to get back
to the sentences and
prisoner population
of the 1970s.”

The Roundtable participants concurred that the discussion had identified several
profound questions that both merit and require sustained investigation: Should the
decisions about punishment reflect the inherent dignity of every individual, as
codified in international human rights law? Should our laws and policies aim to
bring the United States in line with other developed nations (See: “Presidential
Leadership”67,68,69)? Should punishment be guided in some measure by empathy
and understanding that people make choices within limits proscribed by their past
experiences and current circumstances, as so much research suggests? Should it
convey compassion and mercy, and promote reconciliation between offender,
victim and the broader community? Should it be limited in duration in ways that
reflect an individual’s capacity to grow and change? Should the criminal justice
system recognize and redress mistakes and abuses of history, including the
development of mass incarceration?

“The reason we blame,
punish, and forgive is
because we’re looking
for signals that
somebody can return to
the fold in a reliable
way.”

Todd Clear

Judge Morris Hoffman

67

Horsley, S. (2015). Obama Visits Federal Prison, A First For A Sitting President. http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/16/423612441/obamavisits-federal-prison-a-first-for-a-sitting-president.
68 Baker, P. (2015).Obama, in Oklahoma, Takes Reform Message to the Prison Cell Block. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/us/obama-el-reno-oklahomaprison.html?_r=2.
69 Davis, J.S., & Harris, G. (2015). Obama Commutes Sentences for 46 Drug Offenders. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/us/obama-commutes-sentencesfor-46-drug-offenders.html.

34

Presidential Leadership
The call for reform of the criminal justice system and the concern of mass incarceration in the United States has recently
become a prominent matter extending as far as the White House. In a single week in July of 2015, Barack Obama visited a
federal prison, gave a speech to the NAACP regarding mass incarceration, and commuted the sentences of 46 drug
offenders, indicating the urgency for criminal justice reform in the United States. President Obama met with several
inmates at El Reno prison, located just outside of Oklahoma City, on July 16th, where he became the first sitting United
States President to tour a federal prison. This visit was sparked by the recent call for criminal justice reform and, more
specifically, the continued bipartisan efforts to reduce high rates of incarceration. On July 14, 2015, two days prior to his
prison visit, the President gave a speech to the NAACP in Philadelphia, where he discussed the current state of the criminal
justice system and the hope he has for serious reform. In his speech to the NAACP, President Obama stated, “We’re in a
better place because we had the courage to move forward. So we cannot ignore the problems that we have, but we can’t
stop running the race. That’s how you win the race. That’s how you fix a broken system. That’s how you change a country…
If we keep taking steps toward a more perfect union, and close the gaps between who we are and who we want to be,
America will move forward. There’s nothing we can’t do.” To drive his words into action, on July 13, 2015, President
Obama commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders in an effort to make amends for the tough-on-crime mind set of
the past and to set an example for possible criminal justice reform in the future.

It is impossible to know now whether today’s unprecedented attention on criminal
justice reform is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration (and mass
punishment) or the apex of a decade of quieter and more limited reforms. What is
clear from the discussion at the Roundtable, however, is that significant change in
the American criminal justice system will require coming to terms with the
American views on punishment. This challenge, in turn, requires a deep
understanding of our history, the unresolved legacy of slavery, the human
emotions of revenge and forgiveness, the principled limits of the power of the
State, the role of religion and values in shaping culture, and the dynamics of
political power and economic forces. In short, the Roundtable reinforced the
hypothesis that animated its creation: that a sustained interdisciplinary scholarly
enterprise exploring punitiveness in America can perhaps point the way to a
society that is less punitive and more just.

“We as scholars need
to say the things that
most politicians can’t
or won’t.”
Naomi Murakawa

35

For more information about this project and
to access this report electronically, please visit:
https://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/punitivenessinamerica.

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