Revisiting Punishment and Inequality in America at 20 Years

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

Twenty years after the landmark publication of Bruce Western’s Punishment and Inequality in America (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), this panel revisits this foundational work in the sociology of punishment to assess both its impact on the field and where we go from here. What questions about punishment and inequality are now settled in the scholarly record? What conclusions or questions from the book remain unsettled or unanswered? And how has punishment, and our study of punishment, shifted since the mid-2000s? Each panelist will speak about their reading of Punishment & Inequality in light of their own scholarship in these areas and then answer moderator and audience questions.

Sub Unit

• Crime, Law, and Deviance Section / Revisiting Punishment and Inequality in America at 20 Years

Presider

• Michelle S. Phelps, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Panelists

• Bruce Western, Columbia University

• Reuben Miller, University of Chicago

• Christopher Michael Muller, Harvard University

• Jessica T. Simes, Boston University

Session Organizer

• Michelle S. Phelps, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities