Cruel Justice

Download or read book Harsh Justice written by James Q. Whitman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading--more so than anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh? In this novel work of comparative legal history, James Whitman argues that the answer lies in America's triumphant embrace of a non-hierarchical social system and distrust of state power which have contributed to a law of punishment that is more willing to degrade offenders.