"Initial drafts of the essays in this book were presented as public lectures at the Robina Institute Annual Conference at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis in April 2012 and were discussed at a seminar, also in Minneapolis, the following two days."--Preface. Includes bibliographical references (pages 506-527) and index.
Contents:
Evidence, ideology, and politics in the making of American criminal justice policy / Michael Tonry. -- Evidence Seldom Matters. The great American gun war: notes from four decades in the trenches / Philip J. Cook -- Why has US drug policy changed so little over 30 years? / Peter Reuter -- Sentencing in America, 1975-2025 / Michael Tonry -- Deterrence in the twenty first century / Daniel S. Nagin -- American youth violence: a cautionary tale / Franklin E. Zimring. -- Evidence Often Matters. Rehabilitation: beyond nothing works / Francis T. Cullen -- The rise of evidence-based policing: targeting, testing, and tracking / Lawrence W. Sherman -- Longitudinal and experimental research in criminology / David Farrington.
Summary:
For the American criminal justice system, 1975 was a watershed year. Offender rehabilitation and individualized sentencing fell from favor. The partisan politics of "law and order" took over. Among the results four decades later are the world's harshest punishments and highest imprisonment rate. Policymakers' interest in what science could tell them plummeted just when scientific work on crime, recidivism, and the justice system began to blossom. Some policy areas such as sentencing, gun violence, drugs, youth violence, became evidence-free zones. In others, developmental crime prevention, policing, recidivism studies, evidence mattered. This volume tells how policy and knowledge did and did not interact over time, considers contemporary problems, and charts prospects for the future. What accounts for the timing of particular issues and research advances? What did science learn or reveal about crime and justice, and how did that knowledge influence policy? Where are we now, and, perhaps even more important, where are we going? -- From book jacket.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.