Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment Author: Robert A. Ferguson | Language: English | ISBN:
0674728688 | Format: PDF
Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment Description
Review
Robert Ferguson’s
Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment is a book of searing moral vision. He asks how it is that we have become a nation of punishers who can no longer see the human dignity of the punished—indeed, can no longer see the punished at all.
Inferno penetrates the veil thrown over America’s prison archipelago, insisting that we recognize the psychological, moral, and social consequences to the punished and punishers alike. How, he asks, have we allowed the growth of a punishment regime no less horrifying than that of the Soviet gulags? Ferguson is our Dante, acting as our guide through the travesty that is the American inferno. No one can come away from this book without a sense of their own complicity in the sin of our nation, yet with some hope that though the path forward is difficult, it is not yet completely closed. (Paul W. Kahn, Yale Law School)
Inferno is a passionate, anguished cry
against what is sometimes lamented but more than anything is taken for granted and ignored. He enlists his readers in a serious and sustained effort to reform America's prisons and jails. I know of no book just like
Ferguson's. (Lloyd Weinreb, Harvard Law School)
Ferguson succeeds in his aim of provoking thought in this broad assault on the American approach to punishing crime…Ferguson also manages to make the reader identify with the incarcerated, no mean feat in a society where many are more likely to view themselves as a potential victim of crime than a potential inmate…The need for punishment is not in question, rather it is the severity, and Ferguson time and again forces the reader to look deeper at an issue to which most people are oblivious…For the most part he makes a heavy, complex, and contentious subject accessible to the layperson. (
Publishers Weekly (starred review) 2013-12-23)
An important wake‐up call about an emerging crisis that threatens to become a human rights scandal of global proportions. (
Kirkus Reviews 2014-01-15)
About the Author
Robert A. Ferguson is George Edward Woodberry Professor in Law, Literature, and Criticism at Columbia University.
- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press (February 24, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0674728688
- ISBN-13: 978-0674728684
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
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