Born Innocent

Reviews / Votes

Born Innocent offers readers a comprehensive treatment of family separation, vicarious punishment, and other diverse practices that exploit and abuse the children of parents states seek to punish. Sullivan carefully draws together evidence from philosophies of punishment, policies of the carceral and social welfare state, indigenous erasure, and immigration enforcement. What emerges is a deeply persuasive normative case against allowing states to use children as a tool in their massive and expanding punitive arsenal. * Elizabeth F. Cohen, Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University * Born Innocent takes a deeply held belief, that wrongdoers-and only wrongdoers-should be punished for their misdeeds, and skillfully demonstrates that states persistently violate this principle by imposing punishments that harm the innocent dependents of wrongdoers. Sullivan's masterful blend of political theory and policy analysis across multiple policy spaces, including immigration, terrorism, and criminal justice, convincingly demonstrates the urgency with which states must rethink their ways of punishing to better protect innocent dependents from the long-term harm of family separation that too often travels with contemporary forms of punishment. * Patti Tamara Lenard, Associate Professor of Ethics, University of Ottawa * A seminal, ground-breaking, timely thoughtful and thought-provoking study, Born Innocent: Protecting the Dependents of Accused Caregivers provides one of the first unified treatments of state-sponsored family separation and its impact on disadvantaged citizens and immigrants. Especially given its relevance to the current social/political issues with respect to DACA juveniles and young adults, and the continuing escalating numbers of incarcerated parents, Born Innocent is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, college, and university library collections. Informatively enhanced with the inclusion of a fifty page bibliography of References, fourteen pages of Notes, and an eight page Index, Born Innocent is also available in a digital book format. * Helen Dumont, MBR Bookwatch * P]rovides a clear normative argument and puts forth specific and well-considered solutions to the problems of dependents being vicariously punished and separated from caregivers... an unequivocally important project [and] significant contribution to those working at the intersection of international and domestic policy. * Sarah Cate, Perspectives on Politics *