Just Punishment and America's Prison Experiment

Abstract

In less than three decades, wars on crime and drugs in the UnitedStates have resulted in a sixfold increase of the prison population and the construction of the world's largest prison system. As a way of evaluating the morality of this "prison experiment," the author applies several criteria from the just-war theory to the American government's prosecution of wars on crime and drugs that has led to the incarceration of two million people.] E LLIOTT CURRIE IN HIS STUDY Crime and Punishment in America has argued that since 1972 the United States has been engaged in an unprecedented, unparalleled, and largely unnoticed social experiment, "testing the degree to which a modern industrial society can maintain public order through the threat of punishment" or, more specifically, imprisonment. 1 Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project makes a similar point in Race to Incarcerate, noting that "during this period public policy in the U.S. has resulted in . . . a second wave of the great 'experiment' in the use of incarceration as a means of controlling crime." 2 As Mauer's quote implies and David Rothman convincingly established in The Discovery of the Asylum, America's fascination with penitentiaries and stiff sentences is not new but reaches back to the early days of the Republic. 3 Still, this most