Courses

This graduate seminar mixes sociological and historical accounts in order to explore the
social determinants and consequences of the U.S. criminal justice system. The class casts a
wide net – exploring classical texts as well as contemporary scholarship from a range of
sociological traditions.

We begin by discussing classical texts in order to understand the theoretical traditions that
underlie the most interesting contemporary work on the sociology of punishment. Building
on the work of Marxist criminologists like Rusche and Kirchheimer, we explore the
relationship between the U.S. criminal justice system and the market. To what extent can we
understand the penal field as autonomous from economic relationships? To what extent do
economic forces or logics determine criminological thinking and practice? Building on
Durkheim, we explore how punishment is both reflective of social values and constitutive of
social solidarity, and investigate the symbolic consequences (intended and unintended) of
contemporary punishment regimes. Building on readings from Foucault, we explore
punishment and its relationship to the emergence of new forms of bureaucratic and
disciplinary power. Finally, with Goffman, we explore the interactive context of the prison
as relatively autonomous from the external forces that bring it into being.
With the classical theorists behind us, we turn to a history of the present. What is the age at
which we are living today? What are the economic, political, and symbolic causes and
consequences of mass incarceration? To what extent can we understand mass incarceration,
and more recent reform efforts, as reflective or constitutive of new forms of power in
contemporary society?
Finally, we conclude by asking what the future might hold. After four decades of explosive
growth, the U.S. incarceration rate has been declining slowly for the last several years. Crime
rates have declined steadily for the last quarter century. At the same time, Black Lives
Matter has put renewed focus on the ways in which the state continues to exert violence in
poor communities of color. How should we understand the current period of reform?
What are its social and political possibilities and limitations? What would a just justice system
even entail?