Bifurcation Nation: Strategy in Contemporary American Punishment

Seeds, Christopher

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2613083

Cited by 4 publications

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“…23 policy-makers have also left the punitive approach to violent, property and public order crimes intact, and in some cases have even adopted legislation intended to make penalties for such offenses more severe-even as they embrace drug and/or parole reforms. These findings indicate that contemporary discourse about punishment reflects a new way of thinking and talking about incarceration in which the "punishment imperative" (Clear and frost 2013) is simultaneously questioned for some groups, but broadly accepted and even intensified for others (see also Seeds 2015). for those concerned about the human costs of mass incarceration in addition to fiscal considerations, an important question, then, is how to ensure that incarceration rates do not simply stabilize at their current, nearly-but not quiterecord-breaking levels.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…In short, as Seeds (2015) argues, the national discourse on crime and punishment may reflect a new, bifurcated way of thinking and talking about punishment that draws a sharp line between nonviolent and violent offenders and depicts the former as worthy of reform but the latter as deserving of even greater punishment. These observations lead us to suspect that neither the emergence of discourses associated with the “Right on Crime” and “Smart on Crime” campaigns, nor the recent adoption of drug and parole reforms, nor even the dramatic “realignment” of California’s correctional populations, necessarily signal a comprehensive rethinking of the nature, scope, and intensity of U.S. penal practices.…”

Section: The End Of An Era? a Theoretical Account Of The Contradictions Of Criminal Justice Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform

Beckett

Reosti

Knaphus

2016

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

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Recent drops in the U.S. rate of incarceration have triggered much discussion regarding the fate of mass incarceration. Some observers suggest that the political consensus in favor of getting tough on crime has been shattered and replaced by a new consensus that the prison population must be downsized. In this article, we explore the possibility that neither legislation nor public discourse around crime and punishment has shifted so dramatically, and that the cultural dynamics surrounding reform efforts may undermine the prospects of comprehensive sentencing reform. To assess these hypotheses, we analyze trends in criminal justice policy reform from 2000 to 2013 and newspaper stories and editorials on criminal justice reform since 2008. While we do find important examples of changing rhetoric and policy, we suggest that these changes do not constitute a “paradigm shift.” Rather, they are indicative of a more subtle, complex, and contradictory modification of the way punishment is conceived, discussed, and ultimately enacted.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: The End Of An Era? a Theoretical Account Of The Contradictions Of Criminal Justice Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform

Beckett

Reosti

Knaphus

2016

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

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“…Yet, I suggest that they simultaneously operate in a way that dilutes the very distinctions they produce (cf. Seeds, 2017). In the effort to measure risk, assessments homologize, as they link everyone evaluated to a common trait: criminality.…”

Section: Conclusion: (Re)conceptualizing Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing the Performative Effects of Penal Risk Technologies: (Re)producing the Subject Who Must Be Dangerous

Werth

2018

Social & Legal Studies

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This article explores the ways in which practices of risk assessment exert material and semiotic effects that structure how penal subjects are constituted, imagined, and governed. In so doing, it proposes conceptual shifts in how we understand risk logics and practices. It contends that techniques of assessment and classification within parole operate performatively; that is, they do not so much describe reality as they constitute, structure and alter what they appear to report on. While this occurs through shaping the beliefs of penal actors – that is, through ideological mechanisms – this article focuses on the ways in which assessments exert institutional, bureaucratic and automatic effects independent of beliefs. I argue that, through exerting these effects, assessments make the risk of paroled subjects an institutional and practical certainty. While the dangerousness of individuals on parole is historically and ideologically contingent, contemporary practices of risk operate in a way that precludes the possibility of a non-dangerous individual.

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“…Finding that 24 percent (7 of 29) of the justice reinvestment laws enacted between 2000 and 2013 were enacted in the same state legislative sessions as laws that expanded life without parole sentencing options, Seeds (2015) argues that political support for reforms aimed at nonviolent drug offenders comes at the expense of new punitive measures for violent offenders.…”

Section: Research Agenda Item #3: the Content And Consequences Of Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Research Agenda on Reform

Schoenfeld

2016

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

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In the past 10 years, state legislatures from across the political spectrum have passed or considered reforms aimed at reducing prison populations. The breadth of reform challenges social science scholarship that views mass incarceration as “locked-in” by political, social, and economic forces and, as such, presents an important area of scholarly inquiry. In this article, I argue that new research on reform should be animated by a sociopolitical perspective on punishment that developed out of social science research explaining the rise of mass incarceration. In particular, I pose research questions, hypotheses, and potential methodologies related to (1) the causes of the new moment of reform; (2) the variation in reform efforts; and (3) the process, content, and political effects of reform. I conclude by briefly summarizing what we know about the underlying rationales and strategies of this new moment.

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Bifurcation Nation: Strategy in Contemporary American Punishment

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform

The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform

Theorizing the Performative Effects of Penal Risk Technologies: (Re)producing the Subject Who Must Be Dangerous

A Research Agenda on Reform

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