The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941 PDF
Preview The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941
P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 This page intentionally left blank ii P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 the crisis of imprisonment IntheAgeofJackson,privateenterprisesetupshopintheAmericanpenal 1900 system.Workinghandinglovewithstategovernment,by contractors in both the North and the South would go on to put more than half a million imprisoned men, women, and youth to hard, sweated toil for pri- vate gain. Held captive, stripped of their rights, and subjected to lash and paddle, these convict laborers churned out vast quantities of goods and 30 revenue,insomeyearsgeneratingtheequivalentofmorethan$ billion 1880 worthofwork.Bythe s,however,agrowingcross-sectionofAmerican society came to regard the prison labor system as morally corrupt and un- befittingofafreerepublic:itfosteredtortureandotherabuses,degraded free citizen-workers, corrupted the government and the legal system, and defeatedthesupposedlymoralpurposeofpunishment.TheCrisisofImpris- onment tells the remarkable story of this controversial system of penal servitude – how it came into being, how it worked, how the popular cam- paigns for its abolition were ultimately victorious, and how it shaped and continues to haunt America’s modern penal system. The author takes the readerintothevital,robustworldofnineteenth-centuryartisans,industrial workers, farmers, clergy, convicts, machine politicians, and labor leaders andshowshowprisonsbecamealightningrodinadetermineddefenseof republican values against the encroachments of an unbridled market cap- italism. She explores the vexing moral questions that prisons posed then andthatarestillexigenttoday:Whatarethelimitsofstatepoweroverthe minds, bodies, and souls of citizens – is torture permissible under certain circumstances? What, if anything, makes the state morally fit to deprive a personoflifeorliberty?Areprisonersslavesand,ifso,bywhatright?Should prisonerswork?Istheprisonamorallydefensibleinstitution?Theeventual abolition of prison labor contracting plunged the prisons into deep fiscal and ideological crisis. The second half of the book offers a sweeping rein- terpretationofProgressiveEraprisonreformasaboveallaresponsetothis crisis. It concludes with an exploration of the long-range impact on the modernAmericanpenalsystemofbothpenalservitudeandthemovement foritsabolition. RebeccaM.McLennanisAssociateProfessorofHistoryatTheUniversityof 1999 California,Berkeley.In ,shereceivedColumbiaUniversity’sBancroft AwardforherdoctoraldissertationontheriseoftheAmericanpenalstate. i P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 ii P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 cambridge historical studies in american law and society SeriesEditor ChristopherTomlins,AmericanBarFoundation Previouslypublishedintheseries: TonyA.Freyer,AntitrustandGlobalCapitalism,1930–2004 DavisonDouglas,JimCrowMovesNorth AndrewWenderCohen,TheRacketeer’sProgress MichaelWillrich,CityofCourts,SocializingJusticeinProgressiveEraChicago BarbaraYoungWelke,RecastingAmericanLiberty:Gender,Lawandthe RailroadRevolution,1865–1920 MichaelVorenberg,FinalFreedom:TheCivilWar,theAbolitionofSlavery, andtheThirteenthAmendment RobertJ.Steinfeld,Coercion,Contract,andFreeLaborinNineteenthCentury America DavidM.Rabban,FreeSpeechinItsForgottenYears JennyWahl,TheBondsman’sBurden:AnEconomicAnalysisoftheCommon LawofSouthernSlavery MichaelGrossberg,AJudgmentforSolomon:Thed’HautevilleCaseandLegal ExperienceintheAntebellumSouth iii P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 1916 Anon.,“TheOldSystem–andtheNew,”ca. .Bypermission,OsborneFamily Papers,SyracuseUniversityLibrary,SpecialCollectionsResearchCenter. iv P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 The Crisis of Imprisonment protest, politics, and the making of the american penal state, 1776–1941 Rebecca M. McLennan TheUniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley v CAMBRIDGEUNIVERSITYPRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB28RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521830966 © Rebecca M. McLennan 2008 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2008 ISBN-13 978-0-511-39471-3 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-83096-6 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-53783-4 paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 ForA´sta,Felicity,andRoy vii P1:ICD 9780521830966pre CUFX192/McLennan 9780521830966 January5,2008 2:11 viii
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