American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment: Broadly Defined

Abstract

This introductory chapter is a primer on American exceptionalism in crime and punishment (AECP). In the mid- and late twentieth century, the United States diverged markedly from other Western nations first in its high rates of serious violent crime and soon after in the severity of its governmental responses. This has left an appalling legacy of AECP for the new century. The chapter expands on the scholarship in this field first by providing a brief tour of well-known AECP subject areas: incarceration and the death penalty. Next, it introduces claims that a wider menu of punishments should be included in AECP analyses, including probation supervision, parole release and supervision, economic penalties, and collateral consequences of conviction. To conclude, the chapter speaks to the importance of late twentieth-century crime rates to US punitive expansionism.