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Contention and the Pendulum Pivot: Weighting Equal Justice

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Goodman, Philip, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps. Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2019

Abstract

In Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice (2017), Philip Goodman, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps advocate replacing the pendular notion of penal change with an agonistic approach, where contention is central. This Essay reflects on a pendulum component that has escaped theoretical or empirical scrutiny in pendular accounts of penal change: the pivot determining how freely a pendulum weight swings, and its resting equilibrium. In this parting glance at the pendulum heuristic, I relate this pivot to the agonistic perspective on punishment and—focusing on racial politics of juvenile justice—imagine an antiracist calibration of struggle over penal change.

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Type
Review Symposium: Rethinking the Pendulum Model of Criminal Justice History
Copyright
© 2019 American Bar Foundation 

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