title: American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment
author:  Sasha Abramsky 
description: There's no doubt about where journalist Abramsky's fury is directed: at the contemporary U.S. penal system, which he criticizes for jettisoning any thoughts of rehabilitation in favor of increasingly harsh punishment, and which he sees as a reflection of America's violent culture. Few would find much to argue with as Abramsky depicts the recent growth of, and violence in, American prisons; he presents alarming statistics on the rise in government spending on punishment in the past 25 years, even as a "less government is more" ethos has ruled. He's also highly critical of mandatory sentencing laws. As he and others have pointed out, law and order wins political races, and jails provide jobs in places where industry has dried up. Abramsky (<i>Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation</i>) has long written about this issue, and the book displays a lot of on-the-ground reportage with prisoners, corrections officials and scholars. His suggestions for returning to rehabilitation could be more specific, but this remains a well-researched book on a significant American problem that's often locked away behind bars. <i>(May)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: # Punishment and Political Order
  
  KEALLY MC BRIDE
  
  THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS  
  _Ann Arbor_
  
  
  Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2007  
  All rights reserved  
  Published in the United States of America by  
  The University of Michigan Press  
  Manufactured in the United States of America  
  ![img_0](Image00000.jpg) Printed on acid-free paper
  
  2010 2009 2008 4 3 2
  
  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or
  otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
  
  _A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library._
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  McBride, Keally D.  
  Punishment and political order / Keally McBride.  
  p. cm.—(Law, meaning, and violence)  
  Includes bibliographical reference and index.  
  ISBN -13: 978-0-472-09982-5 (cloth : alk. paper)  
  ISBN -IO: 0-472-09982-5 (cloth : alk. paper)  
  ISBN -13: 978-0-472-06982-8 (pb