Fatalism and Indifference—The Influence of the Frontier on American Criminal Justice

Crime and Justice—A Review of Research, Forthcoming

39 Pages Posted: 5 Oct 2021

See all articles by Michael Tonry

Michael Tonry

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law

Date Written: October 4, 2021

Abstract

American criminal laws and criminal justice systems are harsher, more punitive, more afflicted by racial disparities and injustices, more indifferent to suffering, and less respectful of human dignity than those of other Western countries. The explanations usually offered—rising crime rates in the 1970s and 1980s, public anger and anxiety, crime control politics, neoliberal economic and social policies—are fundamentally incomplete. The deeper explanations are four features of American history and culture that shaped values, attitudes, and beliefs and produced a political culture in which suffering is fatalistically accepted and policy makers are largely indifferent to individual injustices. The four elements are the history of American race relations, the evolution of Protestant fundamentalism, local election of judges and prosecutors, and the continuing influence of political and social values that emerged during three centuries of western expansion. The last, encapsulated in Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis,” is interwoven with the other three. Together, they explain long-term characteristics of American criminal justice and the extraordinary severity of penal policies and practices since the 1970s.

JEL Classification: K14

Suggested Citation

Tonry, Michael, Fatalism and Indifference—The Influence of the Frontier on American Criminal Justice (October 4, 2021). Crime and Justice—A Review of Research, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3936107

Michael Tonry (Contact Author)

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law

Guenterstalstr. 73
Freiburg, 79100
Germany

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