Content area
Full text
Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America, by Anne-Marie Cusac. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. 318pp. $27.50 cloth. ISBN: 9780300111743.
This book provides a fascinating account of the history of punishment in America, from the colonial era to the present day. The central thesis of the book is that current retributive responses to punishment reflect the religious traditions of the early settlers who believed that we are all born sinners and, while it is possible to overcome the wickedness in human nature through good deeds, for many, evil must be rooted out through strict and severe punishment. The author argues that this doctrine is so deeply embedded in American culture that it manifests itself in "cruel and unusual" punishment from time to time. Its latest manifestation has been in the use of mass incarceration, the death penalty, and the use of torture in our prisons, including Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
The central theme of the book is that, since the 1970s, there has been a return to a punishment regime in America that justifies the administration of painful forms of punishment to those who have engaged in both immoral and illegal conduct. Arguing that "nothing works" when it comes to rehabilitation programs, the federal prison system and many state prison systems abandoned the rehabilitative ideal...