Law Commons^™

Is America Becoming A Nation Of Ex-Cons?, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Recent rates of mass incarceration have become a concern, but those rates are only part of the challenge facing (and posed by) the American criminal justice system. An estimated 25% of the U.S. adult population already has a criminal record and, with new felony convictions churning out at a rate of a million per year, America is well on its way to becoming a nation of ex-cons. Already, the ex-offender class is the nation’s biggest law-defined, legally discriminated-against minority group, and it is growing. The adverse social implications of this trend remain unclear and the critical demographic tipping point is …

"I Am Opposed To This Procedure": How Kafka's In The Penal Colony Illuminates The Current Debate About Solitary Confinement And Oversight Of American Prisons, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This is the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's In the Penal Colony. The story brilliantly imagines a gruesome killing machine at the epicenter of a mythical prison's operations. The torture caused by this apparatus comes to an end only after the “Traveler,” an outsider invited to the penal colony by the new leader of the prison, condemns it. In the unfolding of the tale, Kafka vividly portrays how, even with the best of intentions, the mental and physical well-being of inmates will be jeopardized when total control is given to people who run the prisons with no independent oversight.

At …