Abstract
The US criminal justice system is known for its commitment to punishing lawbreakers, with the country having the highest rates of imprisonment globally. This has earned the US labels such as carceral state, mass incarceration, and hyper incarceration. This thesis seeks to address two questions with the conviction that answering the first is conducive to answering the second: How did the US achieve such high levels of punishment, and how can its punishment practices be changed?
The first part of the thesis (Chapters 1, 2, and 3) presents the Incapacitative-Essentialist Duo (IED) to explain American punitiveness. The 1970s saw the emergence of a culture that supported (a) the incapacitative theory of punishment and (b) essentialist notions of criminal justice-involved individuals. This culture gave rise to a self-reinforcing cycle: If criminal justice-involved individuals are essentially criminal and so insensitive to change, the most reasonable response is to incapacitate them. In turn, incapacitation communicates the essentially criminal nature of the incarcerated: people stay behind bars because, if left free, they would hurt society again.
The second part of the thesis (Chapters 4 and 5) presents empirical evidence from developmental psychology and desistance from crime to introduce a dynamic understanding of the individual and dismantle the IED model. If people can and do change, they are not essentially criminal and incapacitation for extremely long periods may not fulfil even the consequentialist rationale for incapacitation; reduction of crime.
The third part of the thesis (Chapter 6) argues that these empirical findings on human change can acquire vigour if coupled with the Capability Approach and its theoretical account of how human wellbeing is best advanced. Because of their overlapping core concepts, the two can point toward a trajectory of penal reform that is both empirically and normatively grounded. This approach offers a non-essentializing narrative about criminal justice-involved individuals and promotes penal practices that support desistance.