Looking Back to See the Future of Punishment in America

Abstract

how different the American system of punishment is from those in other Western countries. Most practitioners and informed scholars know that the United States has the highest imprisonment rates in the world and is the only Western country to retain and use capital punishment, but that is only the beginning. Here are other major differences. In many European countries, the age of criminal responsibility is 15 (in Belgium, 18); in most American states it is typically 10 or 12. In most Western countries, only tiny numbers of young offenders are dealt with in adult courts;1 in the United States, by contrast, automatic transfers for serious crimes, low upper-age limits for juvenile court jurisdiction (15 is the lowest), and waiver laws result in tens of thousands of young people being tried and punished in adult courts each year.2 The contrasts for adults are even starker. In most European countries, the longest prison sentence that may be imposed, except for murder, is 14 or 15 years; in the United States it is life without possibility of parole (more than 35,000 prisoners now serve such terms, with more than 3,000 others on death row). In most Western countries, a life sentence in practice means 10 to 15 years; in the United States, even when release is possible, times served are much longer. Life often means life. American-style mandatory minimum and three-strikes laws © Copyright Michael Tonry