Vol. 4 No. 6 (June, 1994) pp. 74-75

CRIME AND JUSTICE A REVIEW OF RESEARCH, VOLUME 17, by Michael Tonry (Editor). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. 499 pp. Cloth $42.50.

Reviewed by Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin.

Noting that the correctional tail seems to be waging the criminal justice dog, this seventeenth volume, in the now well established "Crime and Justice" series, attends predominantly to corrections and sentencing.

Warren Young and Mark Brown's lead chapter provides useful cross-national comparisons of imprisonment. Joan Petersilia and Susan Turner review findings from the RAND Corporation's ambitious field experiment designed to evaluate intensive supervision programs (ISP) in fourteen jurisdictions in nine states. David Weisburd with Anthony Petrosino and Gail Mason investigate methodological issues regarding the design sensitivity of criminal justice experiments as related to the efficacy of sanctions. An overview of what we know about the evolution of the juvenile court is provided by Barry Feld. Noting that sentencing commissions are alive and well, Michael Tonry surveys the experience of these sometimes successful and more frequently maligned administrative bodies set up to reduce judicial "lawlessness" in the form of sentencing disparities. Finally, in a more narrowly drawn, though nonetheless useful chapter, Brian Gormally, Kieran McEvoy and David Wall report on a case study in Northern Ireland and the special problems encountered when institutions attempt to deal with religiously divided and politically motivated prisoners. Departing from the volume's major theme, Robert Meier and Terance Miethe review current theories and research regarding criminal victimization and David Farrington discusses bullying in North America and Western Europe.

So what do we learn from these review essays and case studies? In the realm of methodological considerations, Young and Brown offer useful notes of caution and points of insight in a chapter well balanced in its presentation of conceptual problems and empirical findings related to cross-national comparisons of imprisonment. Greatest emphasis is given to the importance of drawing distinctions between comparisons of admissions and sentence length data on the one hand and the stages of sentencing on the other. We hear again that imprisonment rates do not track the same variables when comparisons are drawn between jurisdictions and within jurisdictions across time. To explain such data inconsistencies, Young and Brown urge that we turn to more intangible cultural factors that are deeply rooted in a society's history, values and socio-economic structure. At the risk of being accused of opting for the unmeasurable mists of time, I quite agree. It is in history, values and socioeconomic structure, however difficult to pin down, that we gain the most insight into the dramatically different willingness to inflict capital punishment as well as the less extreme measures investigated in this chapter. It is in this same realm that we must travel if we are going to map our way to more effective and efficient penal reforms.

From Petersilia and Turner we learn that the intricacies of evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of punishment strategies do not yield easily to even the most carefully designed and implemented investigations. What does an increased recidivism rate mean -- less rehabilitation or more control? ISP programs are often justified as less costly alternatives to incarceration. At the same time, if implemented well these programs may detect more technical violations with subsequent revocations and higher rates of imprisonment. What was designed as a less costly alternative to incarceration becomes a more costly pattern of delayed incarceration. No one has provided a more thoughtful review of and relevant empirical data for these knotty questions than these authors, in this and their other related publications.

If we knew more about the efficacy of alternate sanctions, we could design better guidelines for sentencing. However, as Tonry once again notes, guidelines do not an efficient, problem free criminal justice system make. Try as they might, sentencing commissions have met with mixed success. The U. S. commission has succeeded in radically recasting federal sentencing practices. These changes were in line with the commission's intentions: the proportion of probated cases declined and average prison terms became longer. Where Tonry finds less success in the federal experience is in the area of political support of practitioners. Here, his argument continues, state experience becomes instructive. It is in the states that Tonry finds support of practitioners, sound guidelines and a link between policy and resource allocation. For this reader, the most thought provoking discussion comes in the closing section on remaining issues. How to control prosecutorial discretion? Should it be controlled? If not controlled, sentencing disparity remains alive and well. Why, on the whole, have we been slow to develop non-custodial guidelines? As these begin emerging, what are the severity algorithms? How to handle aggravating and mitigating circumstances? Should there be political flexibility in the scheme for cyclical public concerns? Unresolved issues all. Nonetheless, even with these remaining questions, Tonry leaves us with the closing thought that sentencing commissions and their guidelines have proven quite good medicine; they are the best prescription to date for the ills of lawlessness, arbitrariness, disparity and discrimination that not so long ago were thought to be the necessary evils of criminal sentencing practices.

From the broad policy questions addressed in Tonry's chapter, the reader can move on to Weisburd, Petrosino and Mason's chapter on methodological issues posed when large evaluative experiments are designed for implementation in the field. Here the focus is on the narrowly drawn, though often in terms of funding, determinative problem of sample size. Few firm guidelines are offered, though like reviewers before them, these authors conclude that big is not always better. There are always tradeoffs between practical complexities and statistical power. Far better that researchers gather solid information on 200 subjects than to have loosely relevant data on 2,000.

From tightly controlled experiments, the reader is taken to a more ethnographic case study in Gormally, McEvoy and Wall's chapter depicting Northern Ireland Prisons. It is here that we find rich data on the intricacies of the links between religion, ethnicity, language, political history, violence and sanctioning practices, intricacies that do not yield easily to statistical tools, experimental designs and numerical trend lines. While this chapter certainly stands firmly on its own, it is when the reader takes time to read this case study along with Feld's survey review of the American juvenile court on the one hand and the above reviewed pieces on experimental design and evaluation of ISP's that the balanced diet of material in this volume becomes apparent.

The final two chapters, one on understanding and preventing bullying, by Farrington, and the other on theories of victimization, by Meier and Meithe, raise important questions, each in its own way. At least for this reader, they would have been better placed in another volume. As they stand here, there is a danger that their quite interesting insights and findings will receive a less broad airing than they deserve.