Related Papers
U.S. Constitutional Law: Rights & Liberties eJournal
Life Without Parole as a Conflicted Punishment
2013 •
Craig Lerner
Life without parole (LWOP) has displaced the death penalty as the distinctive American punishment. Although the sentence scarcely exists in Europe, roughly 40,000 inmates are serving LWOP in America today. Despite its prevalence, the sentence has received little academic scrutiny. This has begun to change, a development sparked by a pair of Supreme Court cases, Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012), which express European-styled reservations with America’s embrace of LWOP. Both opinions, like the nascent academic commentary, lament the irrevocability of the sentence and the expressive judgment purportedly conveyed - that a human being is so incorrigible that the community brands him with the mark of Cain and banishes him forever from our midst. In the tamer language of the Graham opinion, LWOP “forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal.” This Article tests whether that phrase is a fair characterization of LWOP today, and concludes that the Graham Court’s treatmen...
Pace L. Rev.
Rethinking the Death Penalty: Can We Define Who Deserves Death-A Symposium Held at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York May 22, 2002
2003 •
WIlliam Erlbaum
The Dignity and Humanity of Bruce Springsteen's Criminals
2005 •
Abbe Smith
SSRN Electronic Journal
Against Life Without Parole
Judith Lichtenberg
History of Religions
Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution . By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. x+305. $35.00 (cloth)
2011 •
Mark Lewis Taylor
Does the Death Penalty Require Death Row? The Harm of Legislative Silence
2016 •
Marah McLeod
This Article addresses the substantive question, “Does the death penalty require death row?” and the procedural question, “Who should decide?”In most capital punishment states, prisoners sentenced to death are held, because of their sentences alone, in far harsher conditions of confinement than other prisoners. Often, this means solitary confinement for the years and even decades until their executions.Despite a growing amount of media attention to the use of solitary confinement, most scholars and courts have continued to assume that the isolation of death-sentenced prisoners on death row is an inevitable administrative aspect of capital punishment. To the extent scholars have written about death row, they have focused on its harshness. None has objected to the fact that prison administrators are the ones who have decided to maintain death row in most capital punishment states.This Article addresses for the first time the authority of prison administrators to establish or retain de...
The pain and purpose of punishment: A subjective perspective
2016 •
Esther van Ginneken
Punishment is one of the purposes of sentencing and may additionally serve instrumental functions, primarily the reduction of crime. However, the current sentencing framework rests on a flawed understanding of the experience and severity of sentences. Punishment can be experienced in a variety of ways and the severity of a sentence depends on individual circ*mstances and vulnerabilities; subjective severity is also inextricably linked to inequality in society. Sentencing guidelines have been introduced with the aim of achieving consistency in sentences, with more severe punishment for more serious offences. However, it is necessary to move away from the idea that we can objectively rank severity of punishment and give more consideration to what it is supposed to achieve. Regarding imprisonment, it currently fails to communicate to prisoners what it is for and neither does it appear to achieve rehabilitation or deterrence. Yet, the legitimacy of the Criminal Justice System rests on perceptions of fairness, not only of victims and the public, but also of those subjected to punishment. A ‘just’ criminal justice system should therefore consider subjective experiences in sentencing and the implementation of sentences. This paper advocates a commitment to communicative punishment, with offenders as active participants in the process of shaping their punishment.
Recidivism, Incapacitation, and Criminal Sentencing Policy
Andrew Leipold
Criminal sentencing policy has moved into the spotlight over the last two decades, as determinate sentencing and greater democratic oversight have brought new scrutiny to the question of how we punish. Much of the focus has been on two facts: first, that the United States incarcerates a relatively large percentage of its population, and second, that sentences are relatively long when compared with other liberal democracies. There are a many reasons for this, but one that is often overlooked is the impact of recidivism. Although reliable statistics are hard to find, it appears that the recidivist rate is quite high among those who are released from incarceration, perhaps as high as 50%. This high number brings with it the attendant social costs, but also reflects a partial failure of some of the justifications for punishment. As a result, incapacitation and retributive notions may dominate our thinking about punishment, with predictable results. This essay looks at the data on recidi...
Humanity & Society
Beyond Punishment: Perpetuating Difference from the Prison Experience1
2000 •
Charles E. Terry
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry
Doing time: A qualitative study of long-term incarceration and the impact of mental illness
2009 •
Edward Mulvey
