Assimilation, Exclusion, and the End of Punishment

Abstract

This essay engages the work of sociologist George Herbert Mead and political theorist William E. Connolly, applying a reading of their understanding of the criminal other to the development of Illinois’ and South Carolina's penal systems at the turn of the nineteenth century. Despite an influx of European immigrants, Illinois politicians and prison officials fashioned an approach to corrections that relied on rehabilitation through assimilation as the core component of disciplining its convict population. In contrast to this approach, South Carolina fashioned a penology based upon the principle of exclusion, one that enshrined retribution over rehabilitation in the paradigm of punishment. The essay concludes by comparing the importance of racial and ethno-cultural politics in shaping regional and national debates over correctional policy and by examining the primary function race plays in explaining the current backlash against the rehabilitative ideal informing so much of contemporary penology.

Citation

Kamerling, H. (2005), "Assimilation, Exclusion, and the End of Punishment", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Crime and Punishment: Perspectives from the Humanities (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 37), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 161-198. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(05)37008-6