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Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, And Punishment At The Frontlines Of Welfare Reform, Richard Fording, Joe Soss, Sanford F. Schram
Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, And Punishment At The Frontlines Of Welfare Reform, Richard Fording, Joe Soss, Sanford F. Schram
University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series
Numerous studies have confirmed that race plays an important role in shaping public preferences toward both redistribution and punishment. Likewise, studies suggest that punitive policy tools tend to be adopted by state governments in a pattern that tracks with the racial composition of state populations. Such evidence testifies to the enduring power of race in American politics, yet it has limited value for understanding how disciplinary policies get applied to individuals in implementation settings. To illuminate the relationship between race and the application of punitive policy tools, we analyze sanction patterns in the TANF program. Drawing on a model of …
Happiness And Punishment, Christopher J. Buccafusco, John Bronsteen, Jonathan S. Masur
Happiness And Punishment, Christopher J. Buccafusco, John Bronsteen, Jonathan S. Masur
All Faculty Scholarship
This article continues our project to apply groundbreaking new literature on the behavioral psychology of human happiness to some of the most deeply analyzed questions in law. Here we explain that the new psychological understandings of happiness interact in startling ways with the leading theories of criminal punishment. Punishment theorists, both retributivist and utilitarian, have failed to account for human beings' ability to adapt to changed circumstances, including fines and (surprisingly) imprisonment. At the same time, these theorists have largely ignored the severe hedonic losses brought about by the post-prison social and economic deprivations (unemployment, divorce, and disease) caused by …
Is Altruism Bad For Cooperation?, Sung-Ha Hwang, Samuel Bowles
Is Altruism Bad For Cooperation?, Sung-Ha Hwang, Samuel Bowles
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Some philosophers and social scientists have stressed the importance for good government of an altruistic citizenry that values the well being of one another. Others have emphasized the need for incentives that induce even the self interested to contribute to the public good. Implicitly most have assumed that these two approaches are complementary or at worst additive. But this need not be the case. Behavioral experiments find that if reciprocity-minded subjects feel hostility towards free riders and enjoy inflicting harm on them, near efficient levels of contributions to a public good may be supported when group members have opportunities to …