By Really McBride.

“The primary purpose of this text is to look at punishment as a central problem of political order. Sociologists, legal scholars, and criminologists study penal regimes: the discipline of political science, with notable exceptions, has ceded this ground. 1 This is a terrible mistake: as I will demonstrate, punishment is both a uniquely revealing lens into how political regimes work as well as a central problem for political administration that requires careful negotiation of the stated ideals of a polity in the exercise of power.”

University of Michigan Press (2007) 205p.

By Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer.

The classic Marxist oriented explanation of why certain classes of people end up in prisons.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1939) 273 pages.

By Pëtr Kropotkin.

“My first acquaintance with prisons and exile was made in Siberia, in connection with a com- mittee for the reform of the Russian penal system. There I had the opportunity of learning the state of things with regard both to exile in Siberia and to prisons in Russia, and then my attention was attracted first to the great question of crime and punishment. Later on, in 1874 to 1876, 1 was kept, awaiting trial, nearly two years in the fortress of Peter and Paul at St. Petersburg, and could appreciate the terrible effects of protracted cellular confinement upon my fellow-prisoners.”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1887) 123 pages.

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By Sara M. Benson.

Race, Leavenworth, and the Culture of Law. Built in the 1890s at the center of the nation, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was designed specifically to be a replica of the US Capitol Building. But why? The Prison of Democracy explains the political significance of a prison built to mimic one of America’s monuments to democracy. Benson argues that Leavenworth reshaped the design of punishment in America by gradually normalizing state-inflicted violence against citizens.

UC Press (2019) 209 pages.

By Graeme R. Newman.

How much should people be punished? Is an egalitarian distribution of punishment possible, or even desirable? Corporate criminals be punished more severely? Should disasters caused by corporations be treated as violent crimes and the executives punished accordingly? Sound modern? This collection of essays written in the 1990s is even more relevant in the 21st. century. Edited with a new and provocative introduction by leading authority on criminal punishment, Graeme R. Newman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University at Albany.

Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2012. 163p.