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Details
Sentencing matters. Life, liberty, and property are at stake. Convicted offenders and victims care about it for obvious reasons, while judges and prosecutors also have a moral stake in the process. Never-the-less, the current system of sentencing criminal offenders is in a shambles, with a crazy quilt of incompatible and conflicting laws, policies, and practices in each state, not to mention an entirely different process at the federal level. In Sentencing Fragments, Michael Tonry traces four decades of American sentencing policy and practice to illuminate the convoluted sentencing system, from early reforms in the mid-1970's to the transition towards harsher sentences in the mid-1980's.
The book combines a history of policy with an examination of current research findings regarding the consequences of the sentencing system, calling attention to the devastatingly unjust effects on the lives of the poor and disadvantaged. Tonry concludes with a set of proposals for creating better policies and practices for the future, with the hope of ultimately creating a more just legal system.
Lucid and engaging, Sentencing Fragments sheds a much-needed light on the historical foundation for the current dynamic of the American criminal justice system, while simultaneously offering a useful tool for potential reform.
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Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Sentencing Matters
Chapter 2. Sentencing Fragments
Chapter 3. Federal Sentencing
Chapter 4. Sentencing Theories
Chapter 5. Sentencing Principles
Chapter 6. Reinventing Sentencing
References
Index
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Michael Tonry is the McKnight Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute on Comparative and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany. Previously he was director of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. He is a visiting professor of law and criminology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and a senior fellow in the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Free University Amsterdam. Tonry is the author or editor of numerous books on criminal justice, race and crime, and sentencing, including Thinking about Crime and Punishing Race.
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"Michael Tonry offers a brilliant critique of U.S. sentencing. He cautions that current strategies to reduce mass incarceration-such as lowering sentences for nonviolent offenders or focusing on short-term savings-miss the mark and will backfire. The problems are far more foundational. Sentencing Fragments, blending elegantly narrated history, acute analysis, and comprehensive empirical work, calls for massive legislative and institutional change. It is a must read for anyone interested in understanding American sentencing and in reversing America's experiment in mass incarceration." -Joan Petersilia and Robert Weisberg, Co-directors, Stanford University Criminal Justice Center
"Sentencing Fragments offers a compelling historical overview of sentencing policy in America during the last several decades. A leading researcher in both the U.S and Europe, Tonry is uniquely positioned to provide transatlantic context which helps explain why incarceration rose exponentially in the U.S. but not in Europe. He presents invaluable insights into how the U.S. arrived at this point, and offers provocative suggestions for reducing incarceration in the future." -Marc A. Levin, Policy Director of Right on Crime, and Director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for Effective Justice
"American political leaders, liberal and conservative alike, agree that American sentencing is deeply unjust and that mass incarceration must be reduced. Voters in several states have enacted sweeping reforms, yet the scope of legislative change has been limited. Solving the crisis of mass incarceration will require our elected leaders to fundamentally recast punitive laws and rebuild sentencing systems from the ground up. Michael Tonry's compellingSentencing Fragments spells out precisely what needs to be done, why, and how." -Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union
