American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment

"Penal policy is complex. By adding fines, jails, probation, and parole into the sanctioning mix, some of the contributors in this volume show that the United States is an even greater outlier in its harshness of penal sanctioning than is generally recognized. Other contributors, pursuing fine-grained analyses of variations among states and counties, reveal that many local and state jurisdictions in the United States compare favorably with the most progressive Western European countries. This is an important book that should be widely read and discussed." --Malcolm M. Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Professor of Jurisprudence and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley School of Law"Serious scholars of penal policy must read Kevin Reitz's American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment. By now, we all know that America overpunishes. But many fundamental questions have remained unanswered -'What explains these punitive policies? Are we only an outlier in incarceration, or are probation, parole, financial penalties, crime rates, collateral sanctions, and the death penalty also implicated?' Now we have answers. Reitz, the nation's premier sentencing scholar, has assembled eleven original essays from the most distinguished scholars, and each essay is serious scholarship at its best-deeply empirical, but understandable for the lay reader. This book will deepen our understanding of America's mass incarceration disaster, and could serve as a rallying cry for authentic criminal justice reform." --Joan Petersilia, Aldebert H. Sweet Professor of Law, Stanford Law School"American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment breaks important new ground in the field of crime and punishment. A stellar group of authors explore aspects of American exceptionalism that have so far been overlooked by scholars. The volume broadens the scope of American exceptionalism studies to include sanctions beyond incarceration and the death penalty; as such it will inform and guide the discourse and scholarship for years to come." --Julian V. Roberts, Professor of Criminology, University of Oxford

Kevin R. Reitz is James Annenberg La Vea Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota.

List of Contributors List of Figures and Tables Introduction, Kevin Reitz Part 1: American Exceptionalism: Perspectives Chapter 1: American Exceptionalism in Crime, Punishment, and Disadvantage: Race, Federalization, and Politicization in the Perspective of Local Autonomy, Nicola Lacey and David Soskice Chapter 2: The Concept of American Exceptionalism and the Case of Capital Punishment, David Garland Chapter 3: Penal Optimism: Understanding American Mass Imprisonment from a Canadian Perspective, Cheryl Marie Webster and Anthony N. Doob Chapter 4: The Complications of Penal Federalism: American Exceptionalism or Fifty Different Countries?, Franklin E. Zimring Part 2: American Exceptionalism in Crime Chapter 5: American Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective: Explaining Trends and Variation in the Use of Incarceration, Tapio Lappi-Seppala Chapter 6: How Exceptional Is the History of Violence and Criminal Justice in the United States? Variation across Time and Space as the Keys to Understanding Homicide and Punitiveness, Randolph Roth Chapter 7: Making the State Pay: Violence and the Politicization of Crime in Comparative Perspective, Lisa L. Miller Chapter 8: Comparing Serious Violent Crime in the United States and England and Wales: Why it Matters, and How It Can be Done, Zelia Gallo, Nicola Lacey, and David Soskice Part 3 Chapter 9: American Exceptionalism in Community Supervision: A Comparative Analysis of Probation in the United States, Scotland, and Sweden, Edward E. Rhine and Faye S. Taxman Chapter 10: American Exceptionalism in Parole Release and Supervision: A European Perspective, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Alessandro Corda 11. Collateral Sanctions and American Exceptionalism: A Comparative Perspective, Nora V. Demleitner Notes References Index