Epilogue

Abstract This Epilogue returns with more sustained attention to the problem presented in the Introduction: felony provides the archetype for crime, but is only ever defined by its practice, which this book and other works have repeatedly shown to be contingent and capricious. In this Epilogue, I briefly trace its post-medieval conceptual history, demonstrating the resilience of the category. I suggest that the way we treat felons and felony convictions demonstrates that current American law has retained the medieval concept of felony, in which felony is an act that reveals essential villainy, not a discrete crime in itself. While several scholars have called for felony’s abolition on the grounds of its inconsistencies and cruelties, I argue that we retain it because it allows us to maintain a fiction that crime—in its most essential form—brings punishment down upon itself. The concept of felony allows us to rid our impression of the law of contingency and fallible actors, providing a fantasy of judgment perfectly clear and punishment perfectly justified.