Philip Smith attacks the comfortable notion that punishment is about justice, reason and law. Instead, he argues that punishment is an essentially irrational ac

America is the most punitive nation in the world, incarcerating more than 2.3 million people—or one in 136 of its residents. Against the backdrop of this unpr

Resource added for the Criminal Justice – Law Enforcement 105046 and Professional Studies 105045 programs.

The statistics are startling. Since 1973, America’s imprisonment rate has multiplied over five times to become the highest in the world. More than two million

Today, questions about how and why societies punish are deeply emotive and hotly contested. In Crime and Punishment in Contemporary Culture, Claire Valier argue