The international diffusion of punitive penality: or,penal exceptionalism in the United States? Wacquant v Whitman

Abstract

The United States has the biggest prison population the world has ever known. Why should this be so and to what extent is this phenomenon of dramatically rising prison numbers now being replicated around the rest of modern society? Wacquant’s Punishing the Poor claims that the rise of neo-liberal polity since the 1970s has not only been the cause of these developments in the United States but at the same time is responsible for an international diffusion of punitive penality. This essay disputes this claim by reference to Whitman’s Harsh Justice. Long-term and deeply ingrained cultures, allied to the structural weakness of the US central state authority since its declaration of independence from Britain in 1776, have been the cause of the recent growth of imprisonment in that country and its differentiation from the rest of Western penality. As such, we now find US exceptionalism in penal policy, rather than any significant replication of this around the rest of Western society.