Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law Enforcement and Corrections
Cruelty, Prison Conditions, And The Eighth Amendment, Sharon Dolovich
Cruelty, Prison Conditions, And The Eighth Amendment, Sharon Dolovich
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, but its normative force derives chiefly from its use of the word cruel. For this prohibition to be meaningful in a society where incarceration is the primary mode of criminal punishment, it is necessary to determine when prison conditions are cruel. Yet the Supreme Court has thus far avoided this question, instead holding in Farmer v. Brennan that unless some prison official actually knew of and disregarded a substantial risk of serious harm to prisoners, prison conditions are not “punishment” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Farmer’s reasoning, however, does not …
Incarceration American-Style, Sharon Dolovich
Incarceration American-Style, Sharon Dolovich
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In the United States today, incarceration is more than just a mode of criminal punishment. It is a distinct cultural practice with its own aesthetic and technique, a practice that has emerged in recent decades as a catch-all mechanism for managing social ills. In this essay, I argue that this emergent carceral system has become self-generating—that American-style incarceration, through the conditions it inflicts, produces the very conduct society claims to abhor and thereby guarantees a steady supply of offenders whose incarceration the public will continue to demand. I argue, moreover, that this reproductive process works to create a class of …