The remainder of this section contains a series of papers by various experts in the field through which notable sentencing reforms activities in several states are described and analyzed in Washington, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Delaware, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Ohio, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
The third section of the book is about sentencing reform activities
outside the United States. The focus is on Europe. This section begins
with an introductory statement by the editors which makes the point that
although some American innovations in sentencing reform have been implemented
by European countries, we have adopted very few sentencing reform ideas
from Europe.
The rest of the third section contains a description of prison
population trends in Western Europe, and the implication of these trends;
namely, prison overcrowding. This is followed by several in-depth descriptions
and analyses of important examples of sentencing reform in certain European
countries, including: England (and some English-speaking countries such
as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa), Germany, Finland,
The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden.
The fourth section deals with the issue of race and sentencing.
The editors point out that although American sentencing reforms were aimed
at diminishing racial discrimination in sentencing, the irony of these
reforms is that they have instead exacerbated distinctions by race, particularly
with respect to African American males. This is largely attributable to
the vectoring of "war on drugs" policies upon disadvantaged neighborhoods;
differential sentencing options for cocaine versus "crack" offenders; and,
the tendency toward harsher punishment, mandatory penalties, and inflexible
sentencing options for judges, all of which decrease possibilities for
sentence mitigation.
The rest of this section contains a number of articles about
the prevalence of ethnic minority persons (especially African American
males) in the criminal justice system. The authors document the increasing
racial disparities in prisons and jails and in the juvenile justice system.
The final section of the book explores the issue of public opinion
and sentencing. The editors state that historically, whether crime rates
rose or fell, rates of imprisonment continued to increase progressively.
This phenomenon is usually explained by asserting that as the attitude
of the public toward crime has become tougher, government officials have
responded by escalating the severity of punishments and by enacting increasingly
harsher policies. They (editors) frame the issue this way: "The key question
is whether public attitudes became harsher, and public officials followed,
or whether conservative politicians cynically used crime as an issue to
frighten Americans and then offered to respond to those fears by enacting
and carrying out harsh politics, in effect heightening fears and then promising
to assuage them" (249).
The answer to this "key question" may be found in the remainder of the final section, which is given-over to a number of articles that summarize national and international public attitudes about punishment. The content of these articles demonstrates that public attitudes favor alternatives to prison for a variety of nonviolent crimes. These articles, especially the one by Julian V. Roberts, summarize a number of studies which suggest that: the public is more supportive of community-based corrections than are the courts; politicians misread public attitudes about alternatives to incarceration; there is public support for rehabilitation efforts; public education about alternatives to imprisonment is very much needed; and, the media tends to inflame public opinion about punishment because it emphasizes the reporting of crimes of violence.
Some material of the type found in this reader can be located at scattered
sources, for example, at the Internet site of the International Centre
for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Policy. Nevertheless, this is an
important book for persons who are interested in the field of community
corrections. It contains, in one place, current information from a variety
of empirical and descriptive studies about sentencing reform efforts, including
sentencing guidelines, alternatives to incarceration, the impact of sentencing
reform efforts upon ethnic minority persons, and the myth about public
opinions regarding sentencing and the harshness of sentencing policies.
The articles in this reader first appeared in a journal, OVERCROWDED
TIMES, which the first author of this book, Michael Tonry, edits. Only
62 libraries hold that journal nationally; therefore, unless one has a
personal subscription, availability of current material on this topic is
somewhat difficult to obtain. The fact that this material is in one place
is a plus. However, the downside is that policy changes in sentencing reform
are ongoing at the local, state and national levels. Therefore, the material
in this book can quickly become dated.
Michael Tonry and Kathleen Hatlestad, along with their contributors, make a good case for the use of alternatives to incarceration, especially a continuum of intermediate sanctions. However, aside from the issue of research methodology, a number of persistent problems remain unresolved concerning the effectiveness of these types of sanctions. The list includes: the methods and processes for selecting offender participants (the reliability of risk assessment as a product of current methods of classification, treatment planing and referral); which agency should administer the services (the rivalry among probation, parole, jails and prisons concerning jurisdiction); and, the common problem that affects most criminal justice innovations: net-widening. In addition, despite the popular favor of some of these sanctions, we are not sure that they really work in terms of the ultimate outcome measure: reduction of recidivism. For example, many studies contain conflicting data regarding the effectiveness of electronic monitoring, boot camps, intensive supervision, community service, restitution programs, and so forth.
Clearly, before we continue to promote correctional policies that emphasize alternative sanctions in order to deal with prison overcrowding and disparities in sentencing, we need to conduct more studies that focus on the rehabilitation effectiveness of these sanctions with respect to recidivism. This is not just a call for more research. What we need are more micro-analytic studies in order to evaluate the effectiveness of intermediate sanctions as types of differential rehabilitation interventions. To be able to do this, we will, at a minimum, need to control for the characteristics of the offenders participating in the programs (treatment amenability), the nature and types of rehabilitation services (correctional counseling/treatment techniques), and the training, education and experience of the staff administering the programs and services (qualifications of the "therapists").
In summary, this book contains a great deal of important information
about sentencing, corrections, and about national and international efforts
with respect to crime control. It is clearly written and well organized.
It includes articles by leading and authoritative researchers in the correctional
field. Most importantly, the book makes a strong intellectual case for
correctional policies, which are empirically driven rather than driven
by ideology and partisan politics, and for the wider use of alternatives
to incarceration, especially for non-violent criminals.