Michael S. Sherry, The Punitive Turn in American Life: How the United States Learned to Fight Crime Like a War
| Author | Stephen Bohigian |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211053600 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Signy Toquinto’s use of “dead already”(2017). Aviram describes points of hopefulness,
explaining how contextualization of offenders’experiences have made some in-roads.
However, despite some shifts in the legal, expert and cultural landscapes, other scholars’
have documented the hardening of US attitudes towards violent offenders, which tempers
optimism. Nonetheless, Aviram ends with a clear call for real rehabilitation and for
reform of parole board composition and practices grounded in empiricism, “to get [us]
the hell out of Bardo”(p. 222).
Overall, while readers may want more contextualization of parole outside of
California, this focus is justifiable given the overall impact of the Manson case and sub-
sequent legal proceedings nationally. Other sources that could compliment this book
include the work of Joan Petersilia, Jonathan Simon and Michelle Phelps.
Though this work is not rooted in media studies, Aviram analyzes how documentaries
and other media depictions are informed by and reinforce common narratives. Readers
may also want to watch one of the many widely available documentaries about the
Manson family. We especially recommend Manson: The Women, which specifically
focuses on the cult narrative and the experiences of women involved in the family.
Undergraduate interdisciplinary or gender and crime-focused seminars would find fruitful
points of discussion in reading Emma Clines’“The Girls”along with Yesterday’s
Monsters as well as some selections from feminist criminology including Nicole Hahn
Rafter and Kelly Hannah-Moffat.
ORCID iD
Chrysanthi S. Leon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8210-7658
References
Kruttschnitt C and Gartner R (2005) Marking Time in the Golden State: Women’s
Imprisonment in California. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Toquinto S (2017) Pregnancy obscured: Street-based sex work and the experience of preg-
nancy. In: Hail-Jares K, Shdaima CS and Leon CS (eds) Challenging Perspectives on
Street-Based Sex Work. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, pp.17–39.
Chrysanthi S. Leon and Maggie Buckridge
University of Delaware, USA
Michael S. Sherry, The Punitive Turn in American Life: How the United States
Learned to Fight Crime Like a War, The University of North Carolina Press,
2020; 312 pp.: 139781469660707, $32.95 (hbk)
For several decades, a wide-ranging collection of scholars and journalists have endea-
vored to understand how, why, and when punishment became central to American gov-
ernance. Why did mass incarceration, militarized police forces, mandatory minimum
562 Punishment & Society 25(2)
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