Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States

Join the Centre for Criminology and Professor Tony Platt for an insightful open seminar, examining the history of punishment and social control within the American criminal justice system.

Professor Tony Platt will discuss some of the main arguments from his latest book; Beyond these Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States.

Professor Platt is currently a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar from the Center for the Study of Law and Society, at Berkeley, University of California.

Beyond These Walls traces the United States’ disturbing history of punishment and social control, revealing how the criminal justice system attempts to enforce and justify inequalities associated with class, race, gender, and sexuality. Prisons and police departments are central to this process, but other institutions from immigration and welfare to educational and public health agencies are equally complicit. 

Professor Platt argues that international and national politics shape perceptions of danger and determine the policies of local criminal justice agencies, while private policing and global corporations are deeply and undemocratically involved in the business of homeland security.

This seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by Dr Alexandra Cox from the Centre for Criminology. To find out more about the Centre for Criminology, visit our website and follow us on Twitter.