Because mutually beneficial cooperation may unravel unless most members of a group contribute, people often gang up on free-riders, punishing them when this is cost-effective in sustaining cooperation. In contrast, current models of the evolution of cooperation assume that punishment is uncoordinated and unconditional. These models have difficulty explaining the evolutionary emergence of punish...

In this essay, I consider how Loic Wacquant’s Punishing the Poor adds to the diverse and growing body of scholarship about contemporary penal change. I begin with an overview of Wacquant’s major arguments and elucidations, then I focus in on how this work fits specifically within theorizations about, and empirical examinations of, late modern punishment. In so doing, I describe the ways in whic...