This study provides an account of the forms, functions, and significance of punishment in modern society. Arguing that penal institutions are social and cultural artefacts as well as techniques of crime-control, the book explores the ways in which penality interacts with a variety of social forces, including strategies of power, socio-economic structures, and cultural sensibilities.

This work charts the dramatic changes in crime control and criminal justice that have occurred in Britain and America since the 1970s. It then explains these transformations by showing how the social organization of late modern society has prompted a series of political and cultural adaptations that alter how governments and citizens think and act in relation to crime.

Taking us inside the world of capital punishment, this book presents a picture of America's peculiar institution - its cultural meaning and symbolic force for supporters and abolitionists. Shattering current stereotypes, the book forces us to rethink our understanding of the politics of punishment in America and beyond.

This wide-ranging study provides the first comprehensive account of the forms, functions, and significance of punishment in modern society. Arguing that penal institutions are social and cultural artefacts as well as techniques of crime control, the book explores the ways in which penality interacts with a variety of social forces, including strategies of power, socio-economic structures, and cultural sensibilities. In constructing his multi-dimensional account, the author re-assesses the interpretations of punishment offered by the Durkheimian, Marxist, and Foucauldian traditions, and goes...