Punishment and Political Order

Punishment and Political Order

Punishment and Political Order Keally McBride The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Copyright by the University of Michigan 2007 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2010 2009 2008 2007 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McBride, Keally D. Punishment and political order / Keally McBride. p. cm. (Law, meaning, and violence) Includes bibliographical reference and index. isbn-13: 978-0-472-09982-5 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-472-09982-5 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-13: 978-0-472-06982-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-472-06982-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Punishment Philosophy. 2. Punishment Government policy. 3. Social control. 4. Sovereignty. 5. Punishment Government policy United States. I. Title. hv7419.m398 2007 364.601 dc22 2006029795

To John

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction Strange Brew Punishment and Political Ideals 1 Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. The Whip of Utopia On Punishment and Political Vision 17 Man s Life Is but a Prison Human Reason, Secular Political Order, and the Punishments of God 37 Earthly Divinity Punishment and the Requirements of Sovereignty 59 Severing the Sanguinary Empire Punishment and Early American Democratic Idealism 81 Chapter 5. Punishment in Liberal Regimes 103 Chapter 6. Hitched to the Post Prison Labor, Choice, and Citizenship 127 Chapter 7. Punishment and the Spiral of Disorder 147 Notes 165 References 179 Index 189

Acknowledgments This project began while I was working with Mary Katzenstein at Cornell University on a John S. McKnight Postdoctoral Fellowship and I became interested in the phenomenon of prison labor. It developed even more at a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at Amherst College, led by Austin Sarat in the summer of 2002. He was most enthusiastic when I developed the idea for this book, and Jim Reische at the University of Michigan Press also carried me along through the writing process, encouraging me to write plainly whenever possible, having faith that a book can be both smart and pleasurable to read even one on punishment. The other participants in the punishment seminar were stellar colleagues in every sense of the word, and I would like to thank Valerie Karno, Robert Gordon, Karl Shoemaker, Ted Sasoon, Alysa Rosenthal, Bill Lyons, and Christopher Sturr in particular for helping me begin to think about punishment and political theory and to write the first section of this book. I would also like to thank Law, Politics, and Society for permission to reprint Hitched to the Post here, and the reviewers who helped me to develop that argument. John Zarobell, Kevin Bundy, Carl Cheeseman, Marie Gottschalk, Nancy Hirschmann, Betsy and Richard McBride, and the anonymous reviewers for the University of Michigan Press read parts of the manuscript and gave me excellent advice and conversation. Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows, and Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality, shared copies of their manuscripts (which have now been released), making it possible for me to benefit from their illuminating work on the American penal system today. Ruth Ost let me teach a seminar on punishment in the Temple University Honors Program, giving me a captive audience that helped immeasurably. My seminars on punishment at the University of Pennsylvania were also lively, helping me to reconceptualize the manuscript significantly.

x Acknowledgments My reading group Jeremy Elkins, Steve Salkever, and Christina Beltran helped me to tackle sovereignty, and Roger Berkowitz staged a well-timed intervention in my thoughts on the subject as well. Andrew Norris assisted my thinking about political order. Rogers Smith welcomed me at the University of Pennsylvania into the intellectual life of a wonderful department and provided the structural support to finish the project, while Valerie Ross encouraged me to think about academic writing very differently. Though the professional support was crucial for this project, the personal encouragement was tremendous. Telling people that you are writing a book on punishment seems to bring out the nascent comedian in many folks. This good cheer helped counterbalance the at times weighty content of the project, and I am grateful for the love and support provided by my friends and neighbors: Katy, David, Michael, Karen, Steve, Sheila, David, Christine, Meg, Ken, Jane, David, Ben, Carola, Sandra, Gerry, Anne, Casey, Andrea, Mamatha, and Marvin. You picked up my spirits and children, gave me dinner and drinks, and without all of you I couldn t have survived my years dwelling upon punishment. Celeste and Theo asked more questions about it than I really wanted to answer, and they continue to demonstrate that you are never too young to be a philosopher or question the inherent justice of a punishment decreed. John, as always, maintained the quintessential balance between interest in my project and encouragement to think about something else, and he gave me support during my trials and provided the pushes needed to overcome them.