Rethinking Punishment

"In the punishment business, we are all pushing Sisyphus’s rock – researchers, practitioners, reformers and especially recipients of punishment – and the shadow it casts has blinded us to just how little progress we have made up this hill (if any). In this lucid, original and utterly persuasive analysis, Lucken somehow rises above this insane cycle we are perpetuating and even suggests a way out of the futility. I can’t imagine a more important and urgently needed book. It should be read and re-read at regular intervals like a treatment for an incurable disease."

Shadd Maruna, Professor of Criminology, University of Manchester, UK

"After several decades of "get tough" approaches to crime and punishment, changes is coming, if slowly and sporadically. In Rethinking Punishment, Karol Lucken, a corrections scholar, examines the new approaches to corrections. The book provides an accurate, yet accessible and up-to-date overview of punishment philosophy and what works (and what doesn’t) in corrections in the 21st century. The book will prove useful to corrections scholars, students, and anyone who wishes to better understand the state of punishment today."

Craig Hemmens, Chair and Professor, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Washington State University, USA

"In Rethinking Punishment, Karol Lucken insightfully unlocks the grand motifs that continue to logjam the agenda to do anything reasonable to reverse the treadmill of mass incarceration. With a Trump presidency thrust upon us, this book is not only timely but also offers ‘smart’ remedies void of ideological grandstanding."

Michael Welch, Professor of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, USA

"After forty years of carceral expansion, the US punitive experiment may have reached a turning point. As the rhetoric of law and order is increasingly challenged by neoliberal arguments about cost containment, critical scholars face the difficult task of charting the possible futures of punishment in an age of fiscal conservatism. Exceptionally well-researched and richly documented, Rethinking Punishment provides an original map of current debates around the definition, justification, and evaluation of penal practices and envisions possible paths toward alternative reformist agendas. This timely book is an invaluable resource for scholars, activists, and anyone interested in the future of the US penal state."

Alessandro De Giorgi, Associate Professor of Justice Studies, San Jose State University, USA