John Phillip Reid Book Award, American Society for Legal History (2009)



Cromwell Book Prize in American Legal History (2009):



"McLennan sheds new light on the history of prisons and punishments from the early republic through the Progressive era by focusing on convict labor. She brings into sharp focus the complex and changing relationship between punishment, work, politics, and economics. The tensions between the conflicting goals of discipline, penitence, and profit provoked clashes between prison administrators, penal reformers, and inmates. McLennan successfully strikes a balance many historians seek but few achieve between granting agency to those who lack access to conventional forms of power and identifying the very real limits of that agency. Even after Progressive era reforms abolished prisoners' involuntary servitude and replaced it with an incentivized system of behavioral rewards and punishments, the penal system still sought to profit from the unfree while preparing them for freedom. McLennan's 'crisis of imprisonment' persists."



Littleton-Griswold Prize in American Law and Society, American Historical Association (2008):



"This detailed study of prisons, punishment, and convict labor fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the history of penology. Concentrating on an in-depth analysis of New York state prisons, McLennan traces the rise and fall of contract prison labor, drawing the connections between this brutal system and the larger political economic context with great theoretical sophistication."





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