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Shame punishment has existed for perhaps as long as people have been punished, and the issue has been revisited in recent years to help improve crime reduction efforts. In this collection, shame punishment is examined from various critical perspectives, including its relation with expressivism, the diversity of shame punishment used today, the link between shame punishment and restorative justice, the relationship between dignity and shame punishment, shame punishment and its use for sex offenders, and critics of shame punishment in its different incarnations. The selected essays are from leading experts and represent the most important contributions to scholarly research in the field.

This, the twenty-seventh volume in the annual series of publications by the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, features a number of distinguised contributors addressing the topic of criminal justice. Part I considers "The Moral and Metaphysical Sources of the Criminal Law," with contributions by Michael S. Moore, Lawrence Rosen, and Martin Shapiro. The four chapters in Part II all relate, more or less directly, to the issue of retribution, with papers by Hugo Adam Bedau, Michael Davis, Jeffrie G. Murphy, and R. B. Brandt. In the following part, Dennis F. Thompson, Christopher D. Stone, and Susan Wolf deal with the special problem of criminal responsibility in government—one of great importance in modern society. The fourth and final part, echoing the topic of NOMOS XXIV, Ethics, Economics, and the Law, addresses the economic theory of crime. The section includes contributions by Alvin K. Klevorick, Richard A. Posner, Jules L. Coleman, and Stephen J. Schulhofer. A valuable bibiography on criminal justice by Andrew C. Blanar concludes this volume of NOMOS.

An Open Letters Monthly Best Nonfiction Book of the Year America’s criminal justice system is broken. The United States punishes at a higher per capita rate than any other country in the world. In the last twenty years, incarceration rates have risen 500 percent. Sentences are harsh, prisons are overcrowded, life inside is dangerous, and rehabilitation programs are ineffective. Looking not only to court records but to works of philosophy, history, and literature for illumination, Robert Ferguson, a distinguished law professor, diagnoses all parts of a now massive, out-of-control punishment regime. “If I had won the $400 million Powerball lottery last week I swear I would have ordered a copy for every member of Congress, every judge in America, every prosecutor, and every state prison official and lawmaker who controls the life of even one of the millions of inmates who exist today, many in inhumane and deplorable conditions, in our nation’s prisons.” —Andrew Cohen, The Atlantic “Inferno is a passionate, wide-ranging effort to understand and challenge...our heavy reliance on imprisonment. It is an important book, especially for those (like me) who are inclined towards avoidance and tragic complacency...[Ferguson’s] book is too balanced and thoughtful to be disregarded.” —Robert F. Nagel, Weekly Standard

This classic has been the most authoritative text in the field since 1924. The thoroughly revised Eleventh Edition continues to provide a sound, sophisticated, sociological treatment of the principal issues in criminology.

This volume examines scholarly and lay thinking about punishment of people convicted of crimes with particular emphasis on "making the punishment fit the crime." The contributors challenge the most prevalent current theories and emphasize the need for a shift away from the politicized emotionalism of recent decades. They argue that theories that coincided with mass incarceration and rampant injustice to countless individuals are evolving in ways that better countenance moving toward more humane and thoughtful approaches.

Emerging from her fascination with anarchists while studying political science at Columbia, Duncan (law, Emory U.) explores the paradoxes of crime, such as law-abiding citizens who like to commit violent criminal deeds, convicts who find beauty in their prison yards, and wardens who lose their jobs because they are actually succeeding at rehabilitating their charges. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR