Thursday, March 1, 2012 | 4:30pm-6:30pm | Engineering 285/287 |
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David Garland, Author T. Vanderbuilt Professor of Law
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The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punishment continues in dozens of American states– a fact that is frequently discussed but rarely understood. The same puzzlement surrounds the peculiar form that American capital punishment now takes, with its uneven application, its seemingly endless delays, and the uncertainty of its ever being carried out in individual cases, none of which seem conducive to effective crime control or criminal justice. In a brilliantly provocative study, David Garland explains this tenacity and shows how death penalty practice has come to bear the distinctive hallmarks of America’s political institutions and cultural conflicts. America’s radical federalism and local democracy, as well as its legacy of violence and racism, account for our divergence from the rest of the West. Whereas the elites of other nations were able to impose nationwide abolition from above despite public objections, American elites are unable– and unwilling– to end a punishment that has the support of local majorities and a storied place in popular culture. In the course of hundreds of decisions, federal courts sought to rationalize and civilize an institution that too often resembled a lynching, producing layers of legal process but also delays and reversals. Yet the Supreme Court insists that the issue is to be decided by local political actors and public opinion. So the death penalty continues to respond to popular will, enhancing the power of criminal justice professionals, providing drama for the media, and bringing pleasure to a public audience who consumes its chilling tales. Garland brings a new clarity to our understanding of this peculiar institution– and a new challenge to supporters and opponents alike. |
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About the AuthorDavid Garland is Professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University. His areas of research include the American death penalty, legal institutions of punishment and control, history and sociology of criminological knowledge, the welfare state, and social theory. Professor Garland has been J.S. Guggenheim Fellow in 2006-2007, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1997, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is also a founding editor of "Edinburgh Law Review" and a Founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal "Punishment and Society". David Garland is the author of Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies (Gower, 1987), Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (The University of Chicago Press, 1993), The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford University Press, 2001), and Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2010) |
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Thursday, May 10, 2012 | 3:00pm-5:00pm | TBA |
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Katherine Beckett, Professor
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With urban poverty rising and affordable housing disappearing, the homeless and other "disorderly" people continue to occupy public space in many American cities. Concerned about the alleged ill effects their presence inflicts on property values and public safety, many cities have wholeheartedly embraced "zero-tolerance" or "broken window" policing efforts to clear the streets of unwanted people. Through an almost completely unnoticed set of practices, these people are banned from occupying certain spaces. Once zoned out, they are subject to arrest if they return-effectively banished from public places. Banished is the first exploration of these new tactics that dramatically enhance the power of the police to monitor and arrest thousands of city dwellers. Drawing upon an extensive body of data, the authors chart the rise of banishment in Seattle, a city on the leading edge of this emerging trend, to establish how it works and explore its ramifications. They demonstrate that, although the practice allows police and public officials to appear responsive to concerns about urban disorder, it is a highly questionable policy: it is expensive, does not reduce crime, and does not address the underlying conditions that generate urban poverty. Moreover, interviews with the banished themselves reveal that exclusion makes their lives and their path to self-sufficiency immeasurably more difficult. At a time when more and more cities and governments in the U.S. and Europe resort to the criminal justice system to solve complex social problems, Banished provides a vital and timely challenge to exclusionary strategies that diminish the life circumstances and rights of those it targets. |
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About the AuthorProfessor Beckett has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles, books chapters, and reports in the areas of criminal law and punishment, social control, inequality, and public policy. She has also published 3 books "Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America" (with Steve Herbert), "The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America" (with Theodore Sasson), and "Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics". |
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Sponsored by the Department of Justice Studies, College of Applied Sciences & Arts
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