Marion Vannier, Normalizing Extreme Imprisonment: The Case of Life Without Parole in California
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221092639 |
| Author | Christopher Seeds |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
15; 48; 143; Chapter 8). The problem with the misdemeanor system, for her, is not so
much that it punishes but more so that it punishes too much and in ways that are anti-
democratic, racially biased, and economically regressive (pp. 203–208). Although
Natapoff insists upon “fundamentally rethinking the policies and practices of the misde-
meanor system”in a way that goes beyond “superficial reforms”(p. 209), many of her
policy solutions—for example, legalization of certain crimes, restricting or eliminating
cash bail, and lowering fines—are framed as ways to bolster the legitimacy of an
ostensibly-broken system rather than work toward abolishing a system that is working
precisely as it was designed. If Natapoff is right (and I believe she is) that “many misde-
meanor injustices are not anomalies. Rather, they flow intrinsically from the structures of
the petty-offense process”(p. 209), then salvaging such a system would be an insufficient
route to justice (see Roediger 2021). Instead of viewing reforms like legalization of
certain offenses or cash bail elimination as end goals, such tactics could be among the
first steps in a broader leap toward abolition (Clair and Woog, 2022).
To fully comprehend how mass criminalization has profoundly shaped our society
over the last several decades, we must understand the central role played by the
petty-offense system. Punishment Without Crime provides a definitive account of the
national misdemeanor system and the injustices endemic to it.
ORCID iD
Matthew Clair https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7462-0649
Matthew Clair
Stanford University
Assistant Professor of Sociology and (by courtesy) Law
References
Clair M and Woog A (2022) Courts and the abolition movement. California Law Review
110(1): 101–143.
Roediger BD (2021) Abolish municipal courts: A response to professor Natapoff. Harvard
Law Review Forum 134: 213.
Stevenson M and Mayson S (2018) The scale of misdemeanor justice. BUL Rev 98: 731.
Marion Vannier, Normalizing Extreme Imprisonment: The Case of Life
Without Parole in California, Oxford University Press, 2021; 212 pp.,
ISBN: 9780198827825, $99.00 (hbk)
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the number of people serving sentences
of life in prison without possibility of parole in the United States ballooned. A handful of
researchers spotted the trend early on, amid other features of mass incarceration, but only
recently have scholars come to examine the proximate causes of the proliferation of life
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