Beyond Harsh Justice: A Space for Institutional Reconstruction?

Abstract

Victor Hugo's vivid evocation of the cruelty of lifelong penal stigmatization stands as a literary reminder of the importance of the modernizing journey, brilliantly charted by James Whitman in Harsh Justice, towards more humane, milder penal practices in continental Europe. Yet, as Whitman argued, as a result of deeply rooted differences in social culture and state authority, Harsh Justice remained the norm in the United States. And that norm seems to have taken yet greater hold over the last half century, with ever more offenders in effect dragging the invisible but heavy chain of perpetual infamy' as a result of the impact of a prison sentence and/or increasingly exclusionary post-sentence disqualifications.