Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America by Henry Kamerling

Reviewed by: Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America by Henry Kamerling Amanda Bell Hughett (bio) Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America. By Henry Kamerling. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2017. Pp. vii, 313. $45.00 cloth; $45.00 ebook) In Capital and Convict, Henry Kamerling adds his voice to the debate concerning whether southern prison practices were distinct from those in other regions. Drawing on a comparative analysis of state penitentiaries in late-nineteenth century South Carolina and Illinois, Kamerling's answer is mixed. While he notes the "politics of race" led "politicians, reformers, and prison officials to think about the project of punishment differently in each region," he suggests "the reality of prisoners' lives … proved remarkably similar" in both places. The similarities between the two states, he argues, rested on state leaders' use of imprisonment as a tool to further the "ascendant industrial capitalist order" (p. 221). Kamerling's book is divided among the three lenses he uses to analyze postbellum penitentiaries: politics, ideology, and culture. He is at his best in the first section, where he utilizes prison records and legislative reports to examine how the politics of race shaped penal practices during Reconstruction. Contrary to earlier scholarship that depicts Black Republican leaders as often ignoring the needs of impoverished African Americans, Kamerling shows how black legislators in South Carolina united to oppose the convict leasing system, which they viewed as a mechanism designed to harm the newly emancipated. Due to their efforts, Kamerling notes, "every other southern state developed a significantly more involved lease system during Reconstruction than South Carolina" (p. 43). Alternatively, racial and ethnic politics did not play a role in defining prison practices in Illinois. Kamerling suggests the diversity of the state's ethic groups, coupled with immigrants' desire to assimilate, impeded their ability to coalesce around prison issues, leaving the fate of Illinois's penitentiary to party leaders who viewed it only in terms of the jobs it allowed them to distribute. [End Page 614] The final two sections of Capital and Convict confirm historians' earlier findings. In his discussion of ideology, Kamerling reframes the familiar story of the National Prison Reform Association and the broader nineteenth-century prison reform movement, showing how reformers developed a new "scientific" penology focused on rehabilitating—rather than merely punishing—those convicted of crimes. Using prison reformers' published and unpublished reports, Kamerling suggests reformers sought to "assimilate" imprisoned men and women by "forcing them to … adopt values and social habits social elites considered appropriate for an emerging industrial workforce" (p. 105). These northern reformers' ideas, however, clashed with those of white southerners, who retook control of South Carolina's prisons in Reconstruction's wake. They viewed imprisonment not as a means to integrate individuals into society, but as a mechanism to exclude African Americans from the polity. Despite such ideological differences among prison leaders, Kamerling argues in his final section that prisoners' lived realities were similar in South Carolina and Illinois. In both states, imprisoned people resisted severe prison practices and, in the process, gave rise to a prison culture predicated on "the interplay of coercion and rebellion" (p. 157). Kamerling's text adds to historians' understanding of prison practices in South Carolina and Illinois, a notable contribution in its own right. Yet, as is inevitable when conducting state-level studies to assess regional differences, readers will be left wondering whether the states Kamerling chose are representative of those found in the broader North and South. Rather than answering this question by comparing prisons in additional states, perhaps historians would benefit from moving beyond the debate concerning "southern distinctiveness" and focusing instead on the deeply embedded legal, political, and economic structures that shaped all prisons, regardless of region. At times, Kamerling points readers in this direction, proposing, though not fully developing, the idea that a "capitalist ethos" served—and continues to serve—as an "organizing principle" for [End Page 615] American punishment practices. This provocative claim is an excellent starting point for future historical research. Amanda Bell Hughett amanda bell hughett is a law and social sciences postdoctoral fellow at the Baldy Center for Law...

Topic: Race, History, and American Society
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences