Marie Gottschalk

Marie Gottschalk is an American political scientist and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, known for her work on mass incarceration in the United States. Quotes The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (2006) Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-86427-5 Americans have been habituated throughout much of their history to indulge in a politics of moralism and law and order in the context of a state that, until recently, had rather limited capacity and legitimacy in the area of law enforcement. Ch. 1, p. 15 Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (2016) Princeton University Press 978-0-691-16405-2 The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few ardent defenders today. But reforms to reduce the number of people in jail and prison have been remarkably modest so far. Meanwhile, a tenacious carceral state has sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment and has been extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It includes not only the country’s vast archipelago of jails and prisons, but also the far-reaching and growing range of penal punishments and controls that lies in the never-never land between the prison gate and full citizenship. Ch. 1, p. 1 In many European countries, if a “lifer” does not continue to pose a major threat to public safety, he or she is typically released after serving approximately twelve years. This is similar to the practice that used to prevail in many states. Ch. 8, p. 171 Thanks to the escalation in the number of people serving life and other lengthy sentences, prisons are becoming maximum-security nursing homes. Ch. 8, p. 171 [R]egistered sex offenders are subject to an Alice-in-Wonderland maze of civil commitment laws, and community notification, registration, and residency restrictions that amount to a kind of ritual exile. Ch. 9, pp. 196–7 Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power, and Violence in America (2025) Princeton University Press 978-0691275260 Google Books The United States is an exceptionally militarized, lethal, and violent country. The growing concentration of economic, political, and military power is draining America of vital resources to sustain healthy and peaceful communities. It is pushing more people to the margins, where a police officer, prison cell, a tent, a military recruiter, or a deadly dose of fentanyl-laced heroin is waiting for them. p. 3 The US failure to protect its people . . . has increased the brittleness of democracy in America. Punishment serves a vital role in reinforcing the moral bounds of society by demarcating what actions are considered wrong and who is blameworthy, as . . . Emile Durkheim once noted. The repeated failure to hold corporations, their executives, and their political patrons accountable has fostered political instability and undermined the legitimacy of US political and economic institutions. So has the related rise in state and structural violence. Taken together, these developments raise the prospect of a bleak, undemocratic future as violence begets more violence, and America morphs into a failed state. pp. 5–6 As it doubled down on pursuing and punishing people accused of street and drug crimes and immigration offenses, the United States retreated from regulating corporations and prosecuting and punishing their executives despite a tsunami of elite-level criminal activities by leading banks, accounting firms and major corporations. Keeping the public focus on immigration offenses, drug crimes, homicides, robberies, and other street crimes was a winning strategy to rivet political attention and public resources on battling crime in the streets, not crime in the suites. p. 10 Frought with contradictions, neoliberalism's political power has long rested on political and ideological slights of hand that keep those contradictions out of the public eye and public debates. Foremost among them is the myth that the state retreated under the neoliberal order. The government did not retreat but rather reposition itself. It pulled back or was forced back in areas such as providing health and social services, public education, public transportation, and workplace protections. Meanwhile, the government's power and capacity to police and punish people in the United States for street crimes, drug offenses, and immigration violations grew vastly thanks to the unprecedented expansion of the carceral state. So did its capacity to police the globe. pp. 13–14 External links Category:Living people Category:Political scientists from the United States Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Women journalists from the United States Category:Yale University alumni Category:Princeton University alumni