NCJ Number
244246
Editor(s)
Michael Tonry
Date Published
2013
Length
554 pages
Annotation
Nine essays discuss how criminal justice research and policy have interacted or failed to interact in the United States over the decades beginning in 1975, as well as what is projected for this interaction in the coming decade through the year 2025.
Abstract
The editor of this 42nd volume in the Crime and Justice Series opens with an essay on "Evidence, Ideology, and Politics in the Making of American Criminal Justice Policy." Five essays are then presented under the theme, "Evidence Seldom Matters." The first essay considers how research on gun violence has evolved over the last four decades, intertwined with the author's personal observations and commentary on his own contributions to this research. The second essay examines why U.S. drug policy has changed so little over 30 years in the face of almost universal criticism of it as overly punitive, expensive, racially disparate in impact, and ineffective. An essay on sentencing in America argues that the initiatives of the "tough-on-crime" sentencing policies are difficult to reconcile with any research that could produce normative sentencing concepts. An essay on "Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century" notes that evidence supporting the deterrent effect of the certainty of apprehension is far more consistent than that for the severity of punishment, suggesting that lengthy prison sentences and mandatory minimum sentencing cannot be justified by research on deterrence. The concluding essay in this section reviews and policymakers' predictions and fear that rates of homicide by youth would continue to escalate even though youth homicide rates began their largest decline in modern history. Three essays are presented under the theme, "Evidence Often Matters." These essays report on and project a more hopeful view that research will impact policy and practice in correctional rehabilitation programs, police crime-control strategies, and the use of longitudinal and experimental research in criminology. Essay figures and references