Felons and Lepers

The epidemiology of criminal sanction.

“The attitudes we normals have toward a person with a stigma, and the actions we take in regard to him, are well known…[W]e believe the person with a stigma is not quite human…We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents…imput[ing] a wide range of imperfections on the basis of the original one…”

-Erving Goffman,

Stigma: Notes on a Spoiled Identity