Incarceration, Inequality, and Imagining Alternatives

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Band 651, Heft 1, S. 302-306

Abstract

Citizenship is a public declaration of equality. Regardless of the inequalities that internally divide a society, citizens enjoy a common set of rights -- perhaps to protest or vote or run for office. The content of citizenship rights has varied greatly across time and place. In the stylized history of T. H. Marshall (1950/1992), rights to speech and access to the courts were among the earliest pillars of citizenship, followed by rights to the franchise, and finally by rights to social welfare with the emergence of modern social policy. Marshall's account of the historical development of citizenship describes a virtuous circle in which the pool of citizens grows as the rights of citizenship become more extensive. Civil rights empower citizens to press for voting rights. Once the male working class was enfranchised in Europe, unions and labor parties set about expanding social rights embodied in the welfare state. In Marshall's account, universal education was the key breakthrough, but safety net programs, national health care, and public pensions could also be added to the list. The articles in this volume describe how mass incarceration in the United States has reconfigured civic life. The virtuous circle of citizenship -- never fully developed in the United States to begin with -- has been interrupted. The punitive turn in criminal justice policy amounts to a transformation of the quality of citizenship, in which the state plays an active role in deepening, not reducing, inequality. The virtuous circle turned vicious. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]