Through the stories of prisoners and their families, including her own family’s experiences, Maya Schenwar shows how the institution that locks up 2.3 million Americans and decimates poor communities of color is shredding the ties that, if nurtured, could foster real collective safety. As she vividly depicts here, incarceration takes away the very things that might enable people to build better lives. But looking toward a future beyond imprisonment, Schenwar profiles community-based initiatives that successfully deal with problems—both individual harm and larger social wrongs—through connection rather than isolation, moving toward a safer, freer future for all of us.

Volume: 12 issue: 3, page(s): 289-306

Article first published online: December 26, 2011; Issue published: July 1, 2012 

Abstract

comments 

While not the UK, Australia is a western democracy with similar Charteristics to Britain and thus some parrells can be drawn - it seems public opionon is split depending on age and number of offenses. This can help the rehabilitation argument as proof that people want punishment for serious offenders but the serious offenders are likely that way because of punishment 

Two studies conducted with nationally representative samples reveal that people support laws designed on the utilitarian principle of deterrence in the abstract, yet reject the consequences of the same when they are applied. Study 1 (N = 133) found that participants assigned punishment to criminals in a manner consistent with a retributive theory of justice rather than deterrence. The verbal justifications for punishment given by these same respondents, however, failed to correlate with their actual retributive behavior. Study 2 (N = 125) again found that people have favorable attitudes towards utilitarian laws and rate them as “fair” in the abstract, but frequently reject them when they are instantiated in ways that support utilitarian theories. These studies reveal people’s inability to know their own motivations, and show that one consequence of this ignorance is to generate support for laws that they ultimately find unjust.

comments 

People seem to support punishment methods but not their outcomes and that people who do justify punishment fail to justify properly - there is no correlation. this shows the punishment debate to be flawed in itself and therefore not an effective system. 

Does link to the UK because people from the UK were asked 

Data were collected via an online experimental survey with a broadly representative sample of adults (N = 133). The sample came from a standing panel of participants coordinated by Study Response at Syracuse University, who were offered a chance to win various cash lotteries. Subsets of this panel (N = 95,574) have been used in a variety of peer-reviewed publications, and the panel overall is highly representative of Western countries’ demographics (Stanton & Weiss, 2002). This particular sub-panel of respondents was 54% female with a median age of 41 years. Thirty-six percent were employed full-time, 13% were employed part-time, 23% were retired or unemployed by choice, and 6% were unemployed and searching for work. Thirty percent had only a high-school diploma, 43% had some college experience, 20% completed a baccalaureate degree, 6% had post-baccalaureate experience, and less than 5% were full time students. Eighty-four percent of the sample was Caucasian, and 60% were US residents. Non-US respondents consisted primarily of residents of English-speaking countries, including Canada (33%), Australia (28%), and the UK (13%).