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The prison system in the U.S. has come under increasing scrutiny and even broad criticism over the past few years, as incarceration rates have soared and scandals find their way into major national dailies.1 Much of the work (Dyer 2000; Parenti 1999; Coyle et al. 2003; Mauer 1999; Herivel and Wright 2003) that has been done by figures and organizations critical of prison growth, inadequate health care and other services, construction industry and corporate profit, new policing methods and discriminatory sentencing procedures, etc., has been outstanding and one can only wish that such criticisms had greater purchase on the legal, political and economic decision-making bodies in the U.S. In what follows, I will depend heavily on, and even presuppose, these analyses. However, this essay is not meant to contribute to these analyses in a specific or concrete way; what I have noticed in my study of prison-related literature is a dearth of what might count as a “philosophical” analysis of...

DOI: 10.1007/s10746-007-9064-7

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