Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America (review)

Perhaps readers of Cruel and Unusual should begin with chapters 10-12, which in my view constitute the book's core. These are excellent pieces of investigative journalism, revisions of articles that first appeared in The Progressive. They reveal some stunning features of American law enforcement since the 1990s that at least this reviewer was not fully aware of. All examples point at a heightened level of punitiveness and restraint, which Cusac associates with the better known increase in incarceration rates since the 1970s. Thus, chapter 10 deals with the evolving technology of restraint through electric shocks, used in prisons, court-rooms and in the street by police. It took me a few times before I immediately realized that, when I read that someone was shocked, I had to take this literally. As observed more often in such cases, the principle of "net-widening" applies: Ostensibly, the new instrument is meant as a mitigation of law enforcement, because it substitutes for something more brutal. However, this legitimizes its extension to target groups not subjected to the harder instrument before. On balance, therefore, there is a brutalization of law enforcement instead of a mitigation. In Phoenix, for example, the number of police shootings dropped from 28 to 13 in 2003, but at the same time tasers were used in no less than 354 cases. And electroshocks are dangerous too. In 2006 Amnesty International counted 156 deaths due to tasers in the US during the previous five years. Citizens, too, can buy these devices now, though the models in question operate from a shorter maximum distance than police tasers.

In a similar vein, chapter 11 deals with the expanding use of restraint chairs, not only in prisons but also in juvenile detention centers, mental hospitals and offices of the Immigration Service. This device, called torture or slave chair by inmates, prevents any movement of their arms, legs and torso. Although it is officially meant for violent persons who without it would pose a threat to themselves or others, officials make liberal use of it often with the secret intention of inflicting an extra punishment on the inmate. For example, prisoners who had to testify in court have been required to do so from a restraint chair. Here as well as in the previous case, the enthusiasm of the manufacturers contrasts sharply with the criticism of human rights groups. Chapter 12, entitled "Abu Ghraib, USA," is even more shocking. Its theme is straightforward: As an investigator, Cusac was unable to share the national surprise and outrage when the photos and films from the Iraqi prison became public. She knew that all examples of physical torture and sexual humiliation reported from Abu Ghraib had been practiced already in American prisons. In some cases this had happened under the responsibility of officials who had been forced to resign and then transferred to Iraq. All devices and practices examined in the three chapters, Cusac argues, would have been considered cruel and unusual a few decades ago. Although courts have intervened in some cases, the overall growth in legal punitiveness is remarkable.

These pieces of investigative journalism may well form the basis of subsequent criminological research. They are embedded in a historical analysis that I find less convincing. Cusac presents a middle-term as well as a long-term thesis. The middle-term one roughly runs like this: From about the mid-1970s a reaction against the liberal and permissive climate of the preceding decade gradually gained momentum. This reaction originated in popular culture, where a fascination with the devil became ever more visible. The diabolic wave actually began already in the 1960s with the film Rosemary's Baby and the well-known Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil. It culminated in other movies such as Carrie (that I regarded as a surrealistic masterpiece, which made me a Brian de Palma fan) and The Exorcist (which, when I saw it much later on tv, made me utterly laugh...