De-Democratizing Criminal Law

Authors

Benjamin Levin, Washington University in St. Louis School of LawFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2020

Publication Title

Criminal Justice Ethics

Abstract

Writing twenty years ago, the late Harvard Law professor William Stuntz diagnosed a set of "pathological politics" at the heart of US criminal law. Stuntz sought to explain why carceral policies in the United States appeared to operate as a one-way ratchet, constantly expanding the scope of criminal law and the severity of its punishments. Stuntz’s article "The Pathological Politics of Criminal Law"--one of the most heavily cited in contemporary criminal law scholarship--ultimately offered an argument grounded in political economy. The story of overcriminalization and mass incarceration was a story of electoral politics, of whiter and wealthier suburban voters favoring harsh responses to social problems and using criminal law to police poorer people of color in US cities, and of the incentives created for judges, legislators and prosecutors to punish more.

Keywords

Criminal Law, Mass Incarceration

Publication Citation

Benjamin Levin, De-Democratizing Criminal Law, 39 Criminal Justice Ethics 74 (2020).

Comments

A Review of Rachel Elise Barkow. Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2019

Repository Citation

Levin, Benjamin, "De-Democratizing Criminal Law" (2020). Scholarship@WashULaw. 401.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_scholarship/401