Michael Tonry

Sandra Bucerius

Volume 51 is a thematic volume on Prisons and Prisoners. Since 1979, the Crime and Justice series 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 occasional thematic volumes, Crime and Justice offers an interdisciplinary approach to address core issues in criminology. Volume 51 of Crime and Justice is the first to reprise a predecessor, Prisons (Volume 26, 1999), edited by series editor Michael Tonry and the late Joan Petersilia. In Prisons and Prisoners, editors Michael Tonry and Sandra Bucerius revisit the subject for several reasons. In 1999, most scholarly research concerned developments in Britain and the United States and was published in English. Much of that was sociological, focused on inmate subcultures, or psychological, focused on how prisoners coped with and adapted to prison life. Some, principally by economists and statisticians, sought to measure the crime-preventive effects of imprisonment generally and the deterrent effects of punishments of greater and lesser severity. In 2022, serious scholarly research on prisoners, prisons, and the effects of imprisonment has been published and is underway in many countries. That greater cosmopolitanism is reflected in the pages of this volume. Several essays concern developments in places other than Britain and the United States. Several are primarily comparative and cover developments in many countries. Those primarily concerned with American research draw on work done elsewhere. The subjects of prison research have also changed. Work on inmate subcultures and coping and adaptation has largely fallen by the wayside. Little is being done on imprisonment’s crime-preventive effects, largely because they are at best modest and often perverse. An essay in Volume 50 of Crime and Justice, examining the 116 studies then published on the effects of imprisonment on subsequent offending, concluded that serving a prison term makes ex-prisoners on average more, not less, likely to reoffend. In 1999, little research had been done on the effects of imprisonment on prisoners’ families, children, or communities, or even—except for recidivism— on ex-prisoners’ later lives: family life, employment, housing, physical and mental health, or achievement of a conventional, law-abiding life. The first comprehensive survey of what was then known was published in the earlier Crime and Justice: Prisons volume. An enormous literature has since emerged, as essays in this volume demonstrate. Comparatively little work had been done by 1999 on the distinctive prison experiences of women and members of non-White minority groups. That too has changed, as several of the essays make clear. What is not clear is the future of imprisonment. Through more contemporary and global lenses, the essays featured in this volume not only reframe where we are in 2022 but offer informed insights into where we might be heading.

Prisons and Prisoners

Crime and Justice, Volume 51

Justice Futures: Reinventing American Criminal Justice is the forty-sixth volume in the Crime and Justice series. Contributors include Francis Cullen and Daniel Mears on community corrections; Peter Reuter and Jonathan Caulkins on drug abuse policy; Harold Pollack on drug treatment; David Hemenway on guns and violence; Edward Mulvey on mental health and crime; Edward Rhine, Joan Petersilia, and Kevin Reitz on parole policies; Daniel Nagin and Cynthia Lum on policing; Craig Haney on prisons and incarceration; Ronald Wright on prosecution; and Michael Tonry on sentencing policies.

Reinventing American Criminal Justice

Crime and Justice, Volume 46

Sentencing Policies and Practices in Western Countries: Comparative and Cross-national Perspectives is the forty-fifth addition to the Crime and Justice series. Contributors include Thomas Weigend on criminal sentencing in Germany since 2000; Julian V. Roberts and Andrew Ashworth on the evolution of sentencing policy and practice in England and Wales from 2003 to 2015; Jacqueline Hodgson and Laurène Soubise on understanding the sentencing process in France; Anthony N. Doob and Cheryl Marie Webster on Canadian sentencing policy in the twenty-first century; Arie Freiberg on Australian sentencing policies and practices; Krzysztof Krajewski on sentencing in Poland; Alessandro Corda on Italian policies; Michael Tonry on American sentencing; and Tapio Lappi-Seppälä on penal policy and sentencing in the Nordic countries.

Sentencing Policies and Practices in Western Countries: Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives

Crime and Justice, Volume 45

Much of the scholarly literature and principal books on criminal justice and crime control policy take the operations of the criminal justice system, the causes of crime and delinquency, theories about crime and justice, and crime prevention as the central topics for study and policy analysis. But law enforcement and public officials create policy responses to specific crimes, not broad categories of offenses. In order to develop the most effective policies, one needs to understand why particular crimes occur and what approaches might best prevent them or minimize the harm they cause. Taking this fresh perspective, The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Public Policy offers a comprehensive examination of crimes as public policy subjects. Michael Tonry, a leading authority on criminology, has brought together the most distinguished active scholars in the field to present a wide-ranging overview and analysis of violent and sexual crimes, property crimes, transactional crimes, transnational crimes, and crimes against morality. The crimes investigated range from often-discussed offenses (homicide, auto theft, sexual violence) to those that only recently began to receive attention (child abuse, domestic violence, environmental crimes); it includes new crimes (identity theft, cybercrime) as well as age-old crimes (drug abuse, gambling, prostitution). Written in a straightforward and accessible manner, each chapter explains why crimes happen, how often, and what we know about efforts to prevent or control them. Aimed at a wide audience of scholars, students, and policy makers, the Handbook is the definitive reference work on crimes and public policy responses to them.

The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Public Policy

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' interests, circumstances, and needs.In Doing Justice, Preventing Crime, Michael Tonry lays normative and empirical foundations for building new, more just, and more effective systems of sentencing and punishment in the twenty-first century. The overriding goals are to treat people convicted of crimes justly, fairly, and even-handedly;to take sympathetic account of the circumstances of peoples' lives; and to punish no one more severely than he or she deserves. Drawing on philosophy and punishment theory, this book explains the structural changes needed to uphold the rule of law and its requirement that the human dignity of everyperson be respected.In clear and engaging prose, Michael Tonry surveys what is known about the deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative effects of punishment, and explains what needs to be done to move from an ignoble present to a better future.

Doing Justice, Preventing Crime

Anthony Bottoms

In this book six leading criminologists address the central issues of ideology, crime and criminal justice in a series of essays originally presented at a symposium held in honour of Sir Leon Radzinowicz in Cambridge in March 2001. This book is concerned with the key themes of the history of criminal justice, the history and development of criminological thought, and criminal justice policy. Each of the contributed chapters makes an original and important contribution to the development of the discipline of criminology. This book is valuable reading for anybody interested in the past and present of the discipline of criminology, explored through essays on morality, prisons, policing, criminal justice and penal policy.

Ideology, Crime and Criminal Justice

In Punishing Race, Michael Tonry demonstrates in lucid, accessible language that these patterns result not from racial differences in crime or drug use but primarily from drug and crime control policies that disproportionately affect black Americans. These policies in turn stem from a lack of white empathy for black people, and from racial stereotypes and resentments provoked partly by the Republican Southern Strategy of using coded "law and order" appeals to race to gain support from white voters. White Americans, Tonry observes, have a remarkable capacity to endure the suffering of disadvantaged black and, increasingly, Hispanic men. Crime policies are among a set of social policies enacted since the 1960s that have maintained white dominance over black people despite the end of legal discrimination. To redress these injustices, Tonry offers a number of proposals: stop racial profiling by the police, shift the emphasis of drug law enforcement to treatment and prevention, eliminate mandatory sentencing laws, and change sentencing guidelines to allow judges discretion to take account of offenders' life circumstances. Those proposals are all attainable and would all reduce unjustifiable racial disparities and the collateral human and social harms they cause.

A Continuing American Dilemma

Punishing Race

Can punishments ever meaningfully be proportioned in severity to the seriousness of the crimes for which they are imposed? A great deal of attention has been paid to the general justification of punishment, but the thorny practical questions have received significantly less. Serious analysis has seldom delved into what makes crimes more or less serious, what makes punishments more or less severe, and how links are to be made between them. In Of One-eyed and Toothless Miscreants, Michael Tonry has gathered together a distinguished cast of contributors to offer among the first sustained efforts to specify with precision how proportionality can be understood in relation to the implementation of punishment. Each chapter examines scholarly and lay thinking about punishment of people convicted of crimes with particular emphasis on "making the punishment fit the crime." The contributors challenge the most prevalent current theories and emphasize the need for a shift away from the politicized emotionalism of recent decades. They argue that theories that coincided with mass incarceration and rampant injustice to countless individuals are evolving in ways that better countenance moving toward more humane and thoughtful approaches. Written by many of the leading thinkers on punishment, this volume dissects previously undeveloped issues related to considerations of deserved punishment and provides new ways to understand both the severities of punishment and the seriousness of crime.

Making the Punishment Fit the Crime?

Of One-Eyed and Toothless Miscreants

Although criminal justice systems in developed Western countries are much alike in form, structure, and function, the American system is unique. While it is structurally similar to those of other Western countries, the punishments it imposes are often vastly harsher. No other Western country retains capital punishment or regularly employs life-without-parole, three-strikes, or lengthy mandatory minimum sentencing laws. As a result, the U.S. imprisonment rate of nearly 800 per 100,000 residents dwarfs rates elsewhere. The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice is an essential guide to the development and operation of the American criminal justice system. A leading scholar in the field and an experienced editor, Michael Tonry has brought together a team of first-rate scholars to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview and introduction to this crucial institution. Expertly organized, the various sections of the Handbook explore the American criminal justice system from a variety of perspectives-including its purposes, functions, problems, and priorities-and present analyses of police and policing, juvenile justice, prosecution and sentencing, and community and institutional corrections, making it a complete and unrivaled portrait of how America approaches crime and criminal justice, and giving persuasive answers as to why and how it has developed to what it is today. Accessibly written for a wide audience, the Handbook serves as a definitive reference for scholars and a broad survey for students in criminology and criminal justice.

The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice

Volume 44 of Crime and Justice is essential reading for scholars, policy makers, and practitioners who need to know about the latest advances in knowledge concerning crime, its causes, and its control. Contents include Robert D. Crutchfield on the complex interactions among race, social class, and crime; Cassia Spohn on race, crime, and punishment in America; Marianne van Ooijen and Edward Kleemans on the “Dutch model” of drug policy; Beau Kilmer, Peter Reuter, and Luca Giommoni on cross-national and comparative knowledge about drug use and control drugs; Michael Tonry on federal sentencing policy since 1984; Kathryn Monahan, Laurence Steinberg, and Alex R. Piquero on the growing influence of bioscience and developmental psychology on juvenile justice policy and practice; Cheryl Lero Jonson and Francis T. Cullen on prisoner reentry programs; James P. Lynch and Lynn A. Addington on cultural changes in tolerance of violence amd their effects on crime statistics; Brandon C. Welsh, David P. Farrington, and B. Raffan Gowar on benefit-cost analysis of crime prevention; Torbjorn Skardhamar, Jukka Savolainen, Kjersti N. Aase, and Torkild H. Lyngstad on the effects of marriage on criminality; and John MacDonald on the effects on crime rates and patterns of urban design and development.

A Review of Research

Crime and Justice, Volume 44

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 criminal justice, criminology, and crime control policy, thus enabling a fundamental understanding of crime and punishment essential to an informed public. Expansive in its coverage, the Handbook presents materials on crime and punishment trends as well as timely policy issues. The latest research on the demography of crime (race, gender, drug use) is included and weighty current problems (organized crime, white collar crime, family violence, sex offenders, youth gangs, drug abuse policy) are examined. Processes and institutions that deal with accused and convicted criminals and techniques of punishment are also examined. While some articles emphasize American research findings and developments, others incorporate international research and offer a comparative perspective from other English-speaking countries and Western Europe. Editor Michael Tonry, a leading scholar of criminology, introduces the 28 articles in the volume, each contributed by an expert in the field. Designed for a wide audience, The Handbook is encyclopedic in its range and depth of content, yet is written in an accessible style. The most inclusive and authoritative work on the topic to be found in one volume, this book will appeal to those interested in the study of crime and its causes, effects, trends, and institutions; those interested in the forms and philosophies of punishment; and those interested in crime control.

The Handbook of Crime and Punishment

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' interests, circumstances, and needs. In Doing Justice, Preventing Crime, Michael Tonry lays normative and empirical foundations for building new, more just, and more effective systems of sentencing and punishment in the twenty-first century. The overriding goals are to treat people convicted of crimes justly, fairly, and even-handedly; to take sympathetic account of the circumstances of peoples' lives; and to punish no one more severely than he or she deserves. Drawing on philosophy and punishment theory, this book explains the structural changes needed to uphold the rule of law and its requirement that the human dignity of every person be respected. In clear and engaging prose, Michael Tonry surveys what is known about the deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative effects of punishment, and explains what needs to be done to move from an ignoble present to a better future.

This handbook provides an accessible, high-quality, and comprehensive introduction to and overview of the operation of the American criminal justice system. It is divided into five sections covering the purposes and functions of the system, its problems and priorities, and its main institutions-police and policing, prosecution and sentencing, and community and institutional corrections. Highly regarded in the field, Michael Tonry brings together a mix of established, senior scholars and up-and-coming writers to provide authoritative and cutting-edge contributions on hot-button topics, from the justice system's handling of immigration and terrorism to racial profiling, parole, and re-entry, as well as bread-and-butter issues like incapacitation, jails, drugs, and police strategy. As countries vary substantially in the detailed operation of some agencies and few scholars have detailed knowledge of the operation of two or more countries' systems, the focus is principally, though not exclusively, on the American justice system.

A comprehensive and accesible overview of the operation of the American criminal justice system. This handbook's extensive coverage of the criminal justice system in the U.S. makes it an important reference for students and scholars in criminal justice, law, and public policy.

A collection of essays by major figures in punishment theory, law, and philosophy that reconsiders the popularity and prospects of retributivism, the notion that punishment is morally justified because people have behaved wrongly.

Has It a Future?

Retributivism Has a Past

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 system in the name of evidence-based policy, evidence has counted only in relation to lowlevel technocratic issues. On the big issues the clear weight of evidence points in opposite directions to those which the government has taken. The primary drivers of recent policies have rather been the emulation of recent USA policies (at a time when these are now being abandoned in the USA because they have been shown to be ineffective); and a media-driven agenda with a focus on conspicuous crime prevention which have had the effect of heightening rather than assuaging public fears and concerns. This provocative yet authoritative book seeks to expose and to unravel what has really driven the making of criminal justice policy in the UK. It will be essential reading for anybody interested in knowing what is going on in criminal justice, and why it is so central to political debate more generally.

Michael Tonry

About

Books

Join the club