It is by now commonplace for scholars, political commentators, and journalists to acknowledge that the American criminal justice system is one of the most punitive in the world—and certainly the harshest among western democracies. Incarceration rates are 5-10 times higher than in Europe or Canada. Although the United States has about five percent of the world’s population, it contains about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Overall, approximately 2.3 million Americans reside in jails and prisons, often under conditions of severe overcrowding, race-based segregation, and rampant physical and sexual violence. How, to what extent, and why has criminal justice become so much harsher in the U.S. than in similar countries? Based on a comparison of France, Germany, and the U.K., this talk seeks to show just how much the U.S. has changed over the past four decades. Four main factors—race, religion, politics, and business—each of which has a distinctively American history and application, have pushed the American criminal justice system far outside the norm of established democracies and beyond the boundaries of practicality or common sense. The comparative analysis of alternative models and practices in other countries suggests possible solutions and reforms to the current situation.

Marc M. Howard is professor of government at Georgetown University, professor of law (by courtesy) at the Georgetown University Law Center, and director of the Georgetown University Initiative on Prisons and Justice. He is an established scholar in the study of comparative democratization, having written two award-winning books published by Cambridge University Press and numerous academic articles in leading political science journals. He has received grants from such organizations as the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation, in support of his research. His active involvement in the eventual exoneration of his childhood friend, Marty Tankleff, who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for over 17 years, inspired him to pursue a J.D. degree (while teaching full-time and maintaining an active research agenda), which he received in 2012. For the past several years, his research and teaching interests and passions have been primarily devoted to the criminal justice and prison systems. He is also a volunteer professor at the Jessup Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in Maryland. He is currently finishing a book entitled Unusually Cruel: Prisons, Punishment, and the Real American Exceptionalism.