October 1\, 2026 – 12:00 - 1:15 pm – Room: TBD
Join us for a book talk featuring Professor Federica Coppola\, from the IE Law School (Spain)\, who will discuss her book\, The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison\, Belonging\, and the Quest for Humanized Justice (Cambridge University Press\, 2026).
The event will open with remarks by Professor Kelley Loper\, followed by commentary from Professor Laura Rovner and Associate Professor María Guadalupe Martínez Alles (Sturm College of Law).
The discussion will be moderated by Professor Sam Kamin (Sturm College of Law).
This book talk is co-hosted with the Criminal Law and Practice Program.
Lunch will be provided.
SAVE THE DATE: Registration Link Forthcoming
About the book:
The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison\, Belonging\, and the Quest for Humanized Justice (Cambridge University Press\, 2026).
Pain is foundational to the language of punishment\, lying at the core of its normative justifications and serving as a benchmark for assessing its humanity. In the context of incarceration\, pain is typically framed as an inevitable consequence of detention\, with the deprivation of liberty viewed as its central source. This book contends\, however\, that the real pain of imprisonment lies in the systematic threat to the fundamental human need to belong. This pain\, scientifically termed social pain\, arises through pervasive forms of social exclusion—such as social isolation\, othering\, and epistemic neglect—that commonly characterize the carceral experience. Drawing on an analysis of documented prison pains through the lens of social pain\, the book raises the normative question of whether punishment can ever justifiably threaten a human need as basic as belonging\, which is as essential to human survival as food or water. It further explores how recognizing the need to belong in the carceral context could affect thresholds of prison legitimacy\, both in terms of sentencing severity and the (in)humanity of prison conditions\, while strengthening protections against penal harms for system-impacted people. The final chapter\, written with scholars currently and formerly incarcerated in a New York State facility\, reflects on how embracing belonging within penal approaches can inform responses to harm grounded in humanization\, proximity\, empowerment\, and collaboration. The book thus advances a call for deeper epistemic dialogue within legal discourse on crime\, punishment\, and justice.
About the author:
Federica Coppola is Tenured Associate Professor of Law at IE University Law School in Madrid\, Spain. Before joining IE University\, she was a Senior Researcher in the Dept. of Criminal Law at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime\, Security and Law (Germany). From 2017 to 2020\, she was Robert A. Burt Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University in New York\, a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School\, and a Postdoc Scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Justice &\; Social Relations Lab. Dr. Coppola has published law review and peer-reviewed articles about criminal law theory\, criminal constitutional law\, criminal justice\, incarceration\, and solitary confinement. She is the author of “The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison\, Belonging\, and the Quest for Humanized Justice” (Cambridge University Press\, 2026) and “The Emotional Brain and the Guilty Mind: Novel Paradigms of Culpability and Punishment” (Hart Publishing\, 2021). She is also the coeditor of “Social Rehabilitation and Criminal Justice” (Routledge\, 2024). Dr. Coppola holds a JD summa cum laude from University of Bologna\, an LL.M in International\, Comparative\, and European Laws\, and a PhD in Law from the European University Institute. Since 2022\, she is a Life Member at Clare Hall College\, University of Cambridge.
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The use of University of Denver resources or facilities for this event does not constitute an endorsement by the University or the Sturm College of Law
of the views of the organizers or speaker(s).