This book brings together an influential group of academics and researchers to review key areas of research, theory and methodology within criminology and criminal justice, and to identify the most important new challenges facing the discipline. The contributors focus on the three central themes of punishment and criminal justice, location and mobility, and perpetrators and criminal careers, on which much cutting edge research within criminology has been taking place. A particular strength of the book is its multidisciplinary and international approach, with contributors drawn from Europe, the UK and the United States.

This book brings together an influential group of academics and researchers to review key areas of research, theory and methodology within criminology and criminal justice, and to identify the most important new challenges facing the discipline. The contributors focus on the three central themes of punishment and criminal justice, location and mobility, and perpetrators and criminal careers, on which much cutting edge research within criminology has been taking place. A particular strength of the book is its multidisciplinary and international approach, with contributors drawn from Europe, the UK and the United States.

This book provides an accessible and systematic restatement of the desert model for criminal sentencing by one of its leading academic exponents. The desert model emphasises the degree of seriousness of the offender's crime in deciding the severity of his punishment, and has become increasingly influential in recent penal practice and scholarly debate. It explains why sentences should be based principally on crime-seriousness, and addresses, among other topics, how a desert-based penalty scheme can be constructed; how to gauge punishments' seriousness and penalties' severity; what weight should be given to an offender's previous convictions; how non-custodial sentences should be scaled; and what leeway there might be for taking other factors into account, such as an offender's need for treatment. The volume will be of interest to all those working in penal theory and practice, criminal sentencing and the criminal law more generally.

Reprint of the fourth edition, which contains an additional text attributed to Voltaire. Originally published anonymously in 1764, Dei Delitti e Delle Pene was the first systematic study of the principles of crime and punishment. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, its advocacy of crime prevention and the abolition of torture and capital punishment marked a significant advance in criminological thought, which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It had a profound influence on the development of criminal law in Europe and the United States.

Crime is one of the most significant political issues in contemporary American society. Crime control statistics and punishment policies are subjects of constant partisan debate, while the media presents sensationalized stories of criminal activity and over-crowded prisons. In the highly politicized arena of crime and justice, empirical data and reasoned analysis are often overlook or ignored. The Handbook of Crime and Punishment, however, provides a comprehensive overview of criminal justice, criminology, and crime control policy, thus enabling a fundamental understanding of crime and punishment essential to an informed public. Expansive in its coverage, the Handbook presents materials on crime and punishment trends as well as timely policy issues. The latest research on the demography of crime (race, gender, drug use) is included and weighty current problems (organized crime, white collar crime, family violence, sex offenders, youth gangs, drug abuse policy) are examined. Processes and institutions that deal with accused and convicted criminals and techniques of punishment are also examined. While some articles emphasize American research findings and developments, others incorporate international research and offer a comparative perspective from other English-speaking countries and Western Europe. Editor Michael Tonry, a leading scholar of criminology, introduces the 28 articles in the volume, each contributed by an expert in the field. Designed for a wide audience, The Handbook is encyclopedic in its range and depth of content, yet is written in an accessible style. The most inclusive and authoritative work on the topic to be found in one volume, this book will appeal to those interested in the study of crime and its causes, effects, trends, and institutions; those interested in the forms and philosophies of punishment; and those interested in crime control.

Presents philosophical and practical arguments in favor of the administration of judicial corporal punishment as a way of addressing problems in the American criminal justice system.

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal offenders and calls into question our society’s commitment to mass incarceration. The Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. Kelly underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Appreciating the limits of moral blame critically undermines a commonplace rationale for long and brutal punishment practices. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of “get tough on crime” attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and '90s, a range of strategies, from “three strikes” and “a war on drugs,” to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrong-doers, but on their families and the communities they come from. This book looks at the consequences of these policies twenty years later.