Punishment policies and practices in the United States today are unprincipled, chaotic, and much too often unjust. The financial costs are enormous. The moral cost is greater: countless individual injustices, mass incarceration, the world's highest imprisonment rate, extreme disparities, especially affecting members of racial and ethnic minority groups, high rates of wrongful conviction, assembly line case processing, and a general absence of respectful consideration of offenders' interest...

Labour has embarked upon a root and branch remaking of the criminal justice system in England and Wales, with a mass of new legislation implemented or planned. It has ensured a continuously high profile for criminal justice issues, and they have been at the centre of wider political discourse. Yet the basis and evidence on which these reforms are being introduced is both uncertain and highly controversial. Despite spending tens of millions of pounds of research into the criminal justice sy...

How can it be, in a nation that elected Barack Obama, that one third of African American males born in 2001 will spend time in a state or federal prison, and that black men are seven times likelier than white men to be in prison? Blacks are much more likely than whites to be stopped by the police, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned, and are much less likely to have confidence in justice system officials, especially the police. In Punishing Race, Michael Tonry demonstr...

Crime is an American preoccupation. Campaigns such as "the war on drugs," zero tolerance policing, and three strikes and you're out--not to mention the ever-shrill coverage of crime stories-all suggest a perpetually outraged nation determined to keep its criminal element at bay, no matter the cost. But is this really what average Americans think about crime and crime control measures? Or is the "no holds barred" approach merely another oscillation in an ongoing cycle of intolerance and tol...

Crime is an American preoccupation. Campaigns such as "the war on drugs," zero tolerance policing, and three strikes and you're out--not to mention the ever-shrill coverage of crime stories-all suggest a perpetually outraged nation determined to keep its criminal element at bay, no matter the cost. But is this really what average Americans think about crime and crime control measures? Or is the "no holds barred" approach merely another oscillation in an ongoing cycle of intolerance and tol...

Almost everyone agrees--Right on Crime, the ACLU, Koch Industries, George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal--that America's current systems for sentencing criminal offenders are a shambles, with crazy quilts of incompatible and conflicting laws, policies, and practices in every state and the federal system. Most everyone agrees that punishments are too severe, and too many people are in prison. However,...

Critical state-of-the-art reviews exploring a range of subjects concerning crime, its causes, and its cures.Since 1979, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research has presented reviews of the latest international research in criminology and criminal justice, providing expertise to enhance the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, criminologists, and political scientists. Volume 54 publishes first-rate review essays by leading scholars that su...

Presents cutting-edge scholarship by preeminent criminology scholars.Since 1979, Crime and Justice has presented a review of the latest international research, providing expertise to enhance the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists. The series explores a full range of issues concerning crime, its causes, and its cures. In both the review and the thematic volumes, Crime and Justice offers...

In this book a group of leading authorities in the field address the key issues surrounding the future of sentencing in Britain, in the light particularly of the highly influential Halliday Report. These proposals for reform amount to the single most ambitious and comprehensive set of proposals for reconstituting the sentencing system of a common-law country, and include proposals to replace existing sentencing statutes, the establishment of a sentencing commission and sentencing guideline...

Crime is one of the most significant political issues in contemporary American society. Crime control statistics and punishment policies are subjects of constant partisan debate, while the media presents sensationalized stories of criminal activity and over-crowded prisons. In the highly politicized arena of crime and justice, empirical data and reasoned analysis are often overlook or ignored. The Handbook of Crime and Punishment, however, provides a comprehensive overview of crim...

The imprisonment rate in America has grown by a factor of five since 1972. In that time, punishment policies have toughened, compassion for prisoners has diminished, and prisons have gotten worse-a stark contrast to the origins of the prison 200 years ago as a humanitarian reform, a substitute for capital and corporal punishment and banishment. So what went wrong? How can prisons be made simultaneously more effective and more humane? Who should be sent there in the first place? What should...

Volume 52 is an annual survey of cutting-edge issues by preeminent criminology scholars.Since 1979, Crime and Justice has presented a review of the latest international research, providing expertise to enhance the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists. The series explores a full range of issues concerning crime, its causes, and its cures. In both the review and the thematic volumes, Crime and ...