Editor's Introduction: Punishment and History.

• Date: 22 December 2020
• Author: Rubin, Ashley T.

PERIODS OF PENAL TRANSITION OFTEN ENCOURAGE HISTORICAL REflection, whether to understand the present situation of crisis and/ or change, or to learn from past strategies and mistakes. Indeed, over the last three decades, an interdisciplinary group of scholars has paid particular attention to the emergence and consequences of US mass incarceration. Recently, however, this attention has been shifting away from explanations of how the current policy situation arose. Instead, academics as well as policy makers, journalists, advocates, and ordinary citizens have been engaging in conversations about how to extricate ourselves from an apparently unsustainable and, to many, morally problematic policy situation. As these conversations increasingly revolve around future change, and societies around the world face distinctive sets of challenges in the field of punishment and social control, historical interrogations of punishment may be especially relevant.

This special issue of Social Justice on the topic of punishment and history appraises the role of history in the study of punishment, illuminating its utility and limitations for understanding penal change. In particular, it...