The Gladys M. Kammerer Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best book published during the previous calendar year in the field of U.S. national policy.
Citation from the Award Committee:
In Dual Justice: America’s Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime, Anthony Grasso explores how the United States came to treat various categories of crime quite differently. Grasso employs a historical institutionalist approach in arguing that powerful political ideas led reformers during the Progressive era to develop a carceral approach for some types of crime, while defining corporate crimes as offenses that merited regulatory instead of criminal consequences. In this sweeping study of American political development, Grasso draws upon an impressive amount of historical evidence to shed light on not only the ways in which political ideologies shaped public policy about who should be considered a criminal in the late 1800s, but also on how these unequal dynamics have played out in the subsequent decades and how they shape the contours of our criminal justice and regulatory systems in the current day. Grasso’s rich historical analysis, his clear prose, and the ongoing relevance of the dynamics he incisively analyzes make this important book valuable to scholars, policy makers, and concerned citizens alike who have an interest in how these consequential policies came to be and how they might be reformed going forward.
Anthony Grasso is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University–Camden, specializing in American political development, public law, criminal justice, and inequality. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. His research explores how political and ideological constructions of criminality have become embedded in law and policy, reflecting and reproducing social, economic, and racial inequalities in U.S. society. His work has appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Studies in American Political Development, and other outlets.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Brendan J. Doherty (Chair) of United States Naval Academy, Dr. Audrey Haynes of University of Georgia, and Dr. Sarah Niebler of Dickinson College