Dual Justice - (Chicago Law and Society) by Anthony Grasso (Hardcover)

About the Book

"While America incarcerates its poor and minority citizens at an unparalleled rate, the nation has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute corporate wrongdoing. This book unearths the intertwined history of these phenomena, revealing that they constitute more than modern hypocrisy. By examining the development of the carceral and regulatory states from 1870 through today, Anthony Grasso shows that America's divergent treatments of street and corporate crime share common and self-reinforcing origins. Their connected roots lie in the Progressive Era, when scholars and lawmakers championed eugenic theories of human difference to justify punitive measures for poor offenders and milder regulatory controls for corporate lawbreakers. These ideas laid the foundation for dual justice systems: criminal justice institutions harshly governing street crime and regulatory institutions governing corporate misconduct. Ever since, the development of the carceral and regulatory states have been related processes that reflect and reinforce common politically constructed understandings about who counts as a criminal. Grasso analyzes intellectual history, policy debates, and institutional change at both the federal and state levels to shed light on how today's racial and class biases have been consolidated across multiple historic eras"--

Book Synopsis

A far-reaching examination of how America came to treat street and corporate crime so differently.

While America incarcerates its most marginalized citizens at an unparalleled rate, the nation has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute corporate wrongdoing. Dual Justice unearths the intertwined histories of these two phenomena and reveals that they constitute more than just modern hypocrisy.

By examining the carceral and regulatory states' evolutions from 1870 through today, Anthony Grasso shows that America's divergent approaches to street and corporate crime share common, self-reinforcing origins. During the Progressive Era, scholars and lawmakers championed naturalized theories of human difference to justify instituting punitive measures for poor offenders and regulatory controls for corporate lawbreakers. These ideas laid the foundation for dual justice systems: criminal justice institutions harshly governing street crime and regulatory institutions governing corporate misconduct.

Since then, criminal justice and regulatory institutions have developed in tandem to reinforce politically constructed understandings about who counts as a criminal. Grasso analyzes the intellectual history, policy debates, and state and federal institutional reforms that consolidated these ideas, along with their racial and class biases, into America's legal system.

Review Quotes

"Dual Justice delivers a powerful account of how eugenicist ideas birthed contrasting governing strategies toward the street and corporate crime in the US...Grasso's contribution to American Political Development and intellectual history, illuminating key elements of the government's hard and soft power rarely discussed in tandem, qualifies as an indispensable part of the full story behind some of America's most consequential policy and cultural challenges."-- "Perspectives on Politics"

"Dual Justice is an argument for creating the kind of society in which we should all wish to live. Grasso argues our existing carceral and regulatory institutions are instead sources of inequality and crime. Dual Justice proposes the possibility of a future our nation desperately needs."--John Hagan Northwestern University

"Dual Justice makes a striking, original contribution to our understanding of the roots of American public policy's disparate treatment of different kinds of criminal behavior. Grasso traces the fascinating history of the divergent ideological frameworks that underlie criminal justice policy and policy toward white-collar crime: the idea of regulation vs. the rehabilitative ideal. Fascinatingly and convincingly, he traces both of these patterns to a common origin: the social Darwinism of the late nineteenth century."--Robert C. Lieberman Johns Hopkins University

"Dual Justice recasts the history of America's carceral state as the successful embedding of a dual faced ideology about law breaking towards the poor and the business elite into our politics and legal culture. Grasso makes a comprehensive, effective case for how this synthesis of ideas about crime in both academia and policy making laid the foundation for the extreme punitiveness of today's carceral state."--Jonathan Simon University of California, Berkeley

About the Author

Anthony Grasso is assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University, Camden. He studies American political development, law, criminal justice, and racial and class inequality.