SAGE Journal Articles

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SAGE Journal User Guide

Journal Article Questions

  1. How does classical criminology clash with modern day philosophies about punishment?
  2. Do religion and rationality have to be mutually exclusive of one another?
  3. Does deterrence work in modern American criminal justice?
  4. How would Bentham and Beccaria critique the American criminal justice system?
  5. Does capital punishment serve as a deterrent

Cesare Beccaria and the Cruelty of Liberalism: An essay on liberalism of fear and its limits Baruchello, Giorgio Philosophy & Social Criticism, May 2004; vol. 30: pp. 303 – 313.

Abstract

In this paper I outline and criticize Judith Shklar’s and Richard Rorty’s ‘liberalism of fear’. Both political thinkers believe liberalism to be characterized by a fundamental opposition to cruelty, which they regard as the least liberal of the features that may distinguish any given human community. In order to demonstrate the limits of the Shklar–Rorty thesis, I make use, in the first place, of John Kekes’s critique of liberalism as to show that liberalism allows for cruelty in so far as it grants wider margins of agency to the members of the community. In the second place, I make use of Cesare Beccaria’s reflections on the cruelty implied by liberalism as such, in so far as this political doctrine endorses the institutions of penal justice and private property.

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A Religious Technology of the Self: Rationality and Religion in the Rise of the Modern Penitentiary Smith, Peter Scharff Punishment & Society, Apr 2004; vol. 6: pp. 195 - 220.

Abstract

This article deals with the rise of the modern prison system in Denmark and internationally from the late decades of the 18th century until the mid-19th century. The theoretical focus will be on the interconnectedness of scientific and religious conceptions that – according to this interpretation – formed an ideological base for modern prisons. I discuss how rationality and religion can be understood as naturally conjoined elements in this context, and show how religion, rather than simply diminishing in influence, took on new roles and functions in modern society. Two religious ‘modes of operation’ can be identified: religion as a power strategy and religion as a technology of the self. The main part of the article addresses the thinking behind, and experiments with, the modern penitentiary – which finally broke through in the United States during the 1820s and from there was re-imported to Europe. I show, recalling Weber, how the liberal and modern-minded bourgeois Danish reformers simultaneously embraced both the religious and rational implications of the modern prison project. The intense debates of this period on the best methods of reforming prisoners disclose distinctively modern accounts of human nature, in which science and religion are mutually involved.

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Assessing the Deterrence Doctrine: A Challenge for the Social and Behavioral Sciences Gibbs, Jack P. American Behavioral Scientist, Jul 1979; vol. 22: pp. 653 - 677.

Abstract

The argument that legal punishments deter crime is strategic for those who admonish social and behavioral scientists to pursue work that has policy implications. It is a strategic argument if only because attempts to assess the deterrence doctrine confront all of the issues and problems that haunt “policy relevant” work in general. Indeed, there are so many issues and problems that several must be ignored here to leave space for a summary of research findings.