Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy : : Liberty and Power in the Early Republic / / Mark E. Kann.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Kann, Mark E.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2005]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2005
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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

Table of Contents

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