The author indicates much of the recent discussion of the incarceration crisis in the United States is based on the assumption that penal practice is a matter of public policy, susceptible to rational debate about social good and social harm in the public sphere. He takes a far more pessimistic view and argues that, from a historical perspective, punishment in the United States has deep roots in the private sphere. Moreover, the author says that the form and frequency of punishment in the United States has historically been driven by the desire for private retribution and personal vengeance more than by abstract notions of justice and that rational penal reform rarely detaches itself from the goal of racial control which is another key motive of criminal justice in the United States. Finally, the author points out that penal systems regarded today as barbarian in their time emerged as reforms to replace even more barbaric systems and that the character of such reforms often reflected basic continuity with respect to the use of criminal law to discipline and punish racial minorities. He concludes the private and racial character of American punishment makes genuine penal reform unlikely. 33 references and 5 notes