The crisis of imprisonment : protest, politics, and the making of the American penal state, 1776-1941 / Rebecca M. McLennan.

Cambridge, [U.K.] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

xiii, 505 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Introduction: The grounds of legal punishment -- Strains of servitude : legal punishment in the early republic -- Due convictions : contractual penal servitude and its discontents, 1818-1865 -- Commerce upon the throne : the business of imprisonment in Gilded Age America -- Disciplining the state, civilizing the market : the campaign to abolish contract prison labor -- A model servitude : prison reform in the early Progressive Era -- Uses of the state : the dialectics of penal reform in early progressive New York -- American Bastille : Sing Sing and the political crisis of imprisonment -- Changing the subject : the metamorphosis of prison reform in the high Progressive Era -- Laboratory of social justice : the new penologists at Sing Sing, 1915-1917 -- Punishment without labor : towards the modern penal state -- Conclusion: On the crises of imprisonment.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 473-484) and index.

Electronic text and image data. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, Michigan Publishing, 2010. Includes both TIFF files and keyword searchable text. ([ACLS Humanities E-Book]) ([Cambridge studies in American law and society]) Mode of access: Intranet.