By John Tillson and Winston C. Thompson.

In this chapter we analyze general views on punishment in order to consider what behavioural requirements schools may establish for students and which (if any) they may enforce through punishment, during compulsory education. Punishment, as we use the word, is the intentional imposition of burdensome treatment on someone – usually on the rule breaker – for having broken a rule, partly because the treatment is burdensome. By carefully analyzing various aspects of punishment, we aim to identify principles that should guide and constrain which behaviours schools punish, and how and why they punish them. In brief, we develop the following principles regarding legitimate requirements that can be made of students and the ways punishment may be used to enforce them. Before children are autonomous, schools may establish both paternalistic, and other-regarding requirements, but not requirements imposed from within comprehensive conceptions of the good. 2 They may punish children in order to ensure a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of social arrangements. Schools may punish children for paternalistic reasons, including developmental reasons, but not for reasons of general deterrence. When children become autonomous, compulsory schooling may establish only other-regarding requirements of student conduct. 3 They may punish to ensure a fair distribution of the burdens or benefits of social arrangements; this includes punishing for reasons of general deterrence, due to children’s responsible choices enhancing their liability, as well as for other-regarding developmental reasons.

Pedagogies of Punishment: The Ethics of Discipline in Education.. Bloomsbury Academic. 2023. pp. 35-62

By H. M. Fogle. Intrdosction by Graeme Newman

At once a chronicle and a funeral dirge, The Palace of Death stands as a haunting testament to early twentieth-century American penal culture. Published in 1909 by an Ohio penitentiary official, H. M. Fogle's volume compiles 59 firsthand accounts of incarceration and execution—each rendered with chilling precision and accompanied by stark photographic documentation. The period covers the execution by hanging and the transition to the electric chair, all in considerable detail. These narratives propel the reader through the twilight of life, revealing how society confronts its most extreme judgments. Yet, behind the factual veneer lies a provocative tension: does Fogle intend to expose the tragedy of fallen humanity, or to feed a voyeuristic appetite for death? In this liminal space between documentation and spectacle, the work demands not only attention, but moral inventory.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. p.229.

By Heather Schoenfeld, Kimberly Rhoten, and Michael C. Campbell

In recent years US prisons have failed to meet legally required minimum standards of care and protection of incarcerated people. Explanations for the failure to protect prisoners in the United States focus on the effects of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and the lack of adequate external oversight. However, very little scholarship empirically examines how different systems of accountability for prisoners’ rights work (or do not work) together. In this article, we introduce an accountability framework that helps us examine the prisoners’ rights “accountability environment” in the United States. We then compare two post-PLRA case studies of failure to protect incarcerated women from sexual assault in two different states. We find that the prisoners’ rights accountability environment is a patchwork of legal, bureaucratic, professional, and political systems. The patchwork accountability environment consists of a web of hierarchical and interdependent relationships that constrain or enable accountability. We argue that ultimately the effectiveness of prisoners’ rights accountability environments depends on whether protecting prisoners’ rights aligns with the priorities of dominant political officials. Our argument has implications for efforts to improve prison conditions and incarcerated people’s well-being. 

Law & Social Inquiry Volume 00, Issue 00, 1–30, 2024