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Across the country prisons are jammed to capacity and, in extreme cases, barges and mobile homes are used to stem the overflow. Probation officers in some cities have caseloads of 200 and more--hardly a manageable number of offenders to track and supervise. And with about one million people in prison and jail, and two and a half million on probation, it is clear we are experiencing a crisis in our penal system. In Between Prison and Probation, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, two of the nation's leading criminologists, offer an important and timely strategy for alleviating these problems. They argue that our overwhelmed corrections system cannot cope with the flow of convicted offenders because the two extremes of punishment--imprisonment and probation--are both used excessively, with a near-vacuum of useful punishments in between. Morris and Tonry propose instead a comprehensive program that relies on a range of punishment including fines and other financial sanctions, community service, house arrest, intensive probation, closely supervised treatment programs for drugs, alcohol and mental illness, and electronic monitoring of movement. Used in rational combinations, these "intermediate" punishments would better serve the community than our present polarized choice. Serious consideration of these punishments has been hindered by the widespread perception that they are therapeutic rather than punitive. The reality, however, Morris and Tonry argue, "is that the American criminal justice system is both too severe and too lenient--almost randomly." Systematically implemented and rigorously enforced, intermediate punishments can "better and more economically serve the community, the victim, and the criminal than the prison terms and probation orders they supplant." Between Prison and Probation goes beyond mere advocacy of an increasing use of intermediate punishments; the book also addresses the difficult task of fitting these punishments into a comprehensive, fair and community-protective sentencing system.

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Library Journal Review

In recent years both the ``rehabilitation model'' of sentencing and the ``lock 'em up'' approach to punishment have failed to stand up to evaluative research. These two well-known criminologists propose greater reliance upon such intermediate sentencing alternatives as fines, house arrest, community service, and combinations of such alternatives. This will be an important addition to the conservative criminological literature of recent years, and will undoubtedly be widely discussed and reviewed for the next few years. For a critique from the liberal viewpoint, see Elliott Currie's Confronting Crime: An American Challenge ( LJ 10/15/85). For academic libraries.-- John Broderick, Stonehill Coll., North Easton, Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Morris and Tonry, two widely respected criminologists, argue that the criminal justice system's method of dispensing sanctions relies far too heavily on two polar extremes: prison or probation. A wide range of intermediate punishments are routinely ignored by the judiciary with the consequence that in most American jurisdictions today people are faced with both a prison population crisis and a corresponding probation caseload crisis. In eight well-written chapters that take the reader into all aspects of criminal-sentencing policy and practice, the authors argue that a truly comprehensive sentencing system in the US can take place only when intermediate punishments (e.g., intensive probation, substantial fines, community service orders, residential controls, and treatment orders) are both accepted and utilized on a broad basis by sentencing judges. A comprehensive sentencing scheme, according to Morris and Tonry, would involve a threefold division to include incarceration, "ordinary" probation and suspended sentence, and intermediate punishments. This work adds a new dimension to the sentencing literature. College, university, and public libraries. -J. C. Watkins Jr., University of Alabama

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Norval Morris is Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology at the University of Chicago and the author of ten books on criminology. Michael Tonry is Sonosky Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School. Together they edit Crime and Justice--A Review of Research.