ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that punishment in the contemporary United States is a mechanism of exclusion which generates political, social and economic inequality. Drawing upon Michael Walzer’s concerns about punishment as a practice within a just democratic social order, a moral framework of the who, how and, especially, the why of punishment is sketched, with attention to underlying theological dimensions. Then the realities of who is punished and how that punishment is conducted are considered which show how these practices extend forms of race and class inequality. Finally, the chapter returns to the why to ask what these inequalities suggest about the why of punishment, drawing upon some contemporary theorists of US incarceration.
