Freedom and Social Control
Tentative Review for Exam Two

The exam is multiple choice, maybe some matching.
The exam is worth 50 points.

The exam is comprehensive, so review the previous study guide.

What are the outstanding features of prison trends in the United States over the past 30 years? According to text and lecture, are there class and racial-ethnic disparities in the way the state punishes in the United States? If so, what racial group shoulders most disproportionately the burden of mass incarceration in the United States? How are the changes in punishment related to the long waves of capitalist development?

We covered five types of explanations for crime and or punishment during this unit with respect to explaining the rise of prison populations over the past forty years. What are they? What are their main elements? What are problems with each approach? What is their political character? What are problems specific to these views? What false assumption do these theories share when explaining rates of incarceration? What do the FBI statistics say about the rate of crime over the past 40 years? What are some criticisms of the FBI statistics? What is the NCVS? Why is it superior to FBI’s UCR? What do comparisons between these measures show? Why is this significant?

Know Richard Quinney’s social reality of crime thesis. What are the propositions of this thesis? Under what conditions are criminal definitions more likely to be formed and applied? According to Quinney, what community and organizational factors increase the probability that criminal definitions will be applied?

What is the basic of thrust of Mark Colvin's book, Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs? How are changes in punishment in the nineteenth century connected to changes in social structure of the United States? How is the criminal justice system of the twentieth century connected to developments in the nineteenth century? According to Colvin, does crime explain punishment? If not, what does?

What are the main arguments of the several theorists Colvin covers? Be familiar with the ideas of Durkheim, Marx, Foucault, Elias, and associated scholars. For example, who links variation in the scope and intensity of punishment to changes in the material base of society, such as the size of the excess work force? Who links variation in the scope and intensity of punishment to changes in the division of labor and crises of collective moral sentiments? What do Rusche and Kirchheimer argue? Be prepared to match theorists with interpretations of changes in punishment in the 19th century.

Durkheim theorizes that changes in punishment reflect changes in the relationship of the moral order and moral sentiments to the social totality and the division of labor. What were the main points of his argument? What is the difference between mechanical and organic solidarity? What is the difference between mala in se and mala prohibita? What is retribution? Restitution? Why does Durkheim believe that crime is a normal feature of healthy societies? What is anomie? What is Durkheim’s explanation of suicide?

Know terms from Marx. What is exploitation? What is surplus value? What is the difference between absolute and relative surplus value? How does Marx link variation in the scope and intensity of punishment to changes in the material base of society? What are the basic features of the capitalist mode of production? What are the consequences of accumulation in terms of punishment? How do Rusche and Kirchheimer explain this?

What does Michel Foucault claim changed between the executions of regicides Damiens and Fieschi? What was the symbol of power during the First Penal Age? During the First Penal Age, torture had two purposes/functions. What were these? What is the character of the new moral technologies of the Second Penal Age? Between the First Penal Age and the Second Penal Age, the central power figure shifted from what to what? Who was Cesare Beccaria? What did the eighteenth century prison reformer Jeremy Bentham argue? What is the “Panopticon”? What does it look like? What is its function? What is “panopticism”?

How would Norbert Elias explain changes in punishment in the nineteenth century? Why does he contend that growing humanitarianism, part of the civilizing process, led to a reduction in the severity of punishment?

According to Colvin, what are the characteristics of early colonial America? How does that square with what I have argued? What were some of the changes in the character of crime in the eighteenth century according to Colvin? Colvin suggests that Protestant religion changed to fit with the new economic order. Which religious belief represented the new Calvinist theology justifying capitalism?

According Rusche and Kirchheimer, why was state punishment was not very great in the early Middle Ages in Europe? According to them, several forces undermined the private character of the law during the fourteenth century in Europe. What were these? What were the major changes in the class structure in the transition from feudalism to capitalism?

How do conceptions of crime and punishment change with the rise of capitalism? Who are Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Rush and what did they advocate? With what did Bentham propose criminal justice should be concerned with? How did conceptions of criminal behavior change with the emergence of industrialism in the West?

In class, I explained the development of the penitentiary in the nineteenth century by linking changes in punishment to economic cycles. Why does Colvin criticize this procedure? According to Colvin, to fully understand the cycles of reform and stagnation in the development of the penitentiary one needs to do what?

How would the four main theorists Colvin covers in his text explain the development of true womanhood? What were the reasons for the expansion of women's prison reform in the mid-late 19th century? What did Zebulon Brockway propose in the mid-1800s to minimize crime? According to Colvin, did the emergence of the ideology of true womanhood change the way people thought about the inherent natures of men and women? What was the purpose of scientific charity?

What do Ehrenreich and English argue in the article, “The Sexual Politics of Sickness?” What is the cult of invalidism? Were there social class differences in how the cult of invalidism affected women? What was the theory many doctors were claiming explained mental illness in women in the late nineteenth century? What do Ehrenreich and English identify as the principle causes of the cult and its effects? Are there parallels between the way women are treated today and they way they were treated in one hundred years ago?

What is the logic of racially-based sexual controls in the United States? What was the character of chattel slavery in the United States? What different about the United States and the United Kingdom that promoted the use of slavery in the former.

According to Colvin, what are the factors that shaped the convict leasing system in the US South? According to Colvin, what does the case of southern punishment cause us to question? What role did white fear of black crime play during the emergence of the new south? Which of the four major theorists covered in Colvin’s text fail to adequately explain punishment in the US South, according to the author?

Be prepared to connect Weber and Ritzer’s arguments to Foucault’s analysis of the Panopticon?  How would you explain the Panopticon using Ritzer’s McDonaldization principles?