Michael Tonry - Punishment and Politics
Here you can read online Michael Tonry - Punishment and Politics full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2012, publisher: Routledge, genre: Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Punishment and Politics
- Author:
- Publisher:Routledge
- Genre:
- Year:2012
- Rating:5 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Punishment and Politics: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Punishment and Politics" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Labour has embarked upon a root and branch remaking of the criminal justice system in England and Wales, with a mass of new legislation implemented or planned. It has ensured a continuously high profile for criminal justice issues, and they have been at the centre of wider political discourse. Yet the basis and evidence on which these reforms are being introduced is both uncertain and highly controversial. Despite spending tens of millions of pounds of research into the criminal justice system in the name of evidence-based policy, evidence has counted only in relation to lowlevel technocratic issues. On the big issues the clear weight of evidence points in opposite directions to those which the government has taken. The primary drivers of recent policies have rather been the emulation of recent USA policies (at a time when these are now being abandoned in the USA because they have been shown to be ineffective); and a media-driven agenda with a focus on conspicuous crime prevention which have had the effect of heightening rather than assuaging public fears and concerns. This provocative yet authoritative book seeks to expose and to unravel what has really driven the making of criminal justice policy in the UK. It will be essential reading for anybody interested in knowing what is going on in criminal justice, and why it is so central to political debate more generally.
Michael Tonry: author's other books
Who wrote Punishment and Politics? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Michael Tonry
Michael Tonry
Adrian Barton
Cliff Roberson
Michael J Coyle
Lawrence F. Travis III
Richard Gordon Wright
Punishment and Politics — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Punishment and Politics" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Punishment and Politics
Evidence and Emulation in the Making of English Crime Control Policy
by Michael Tonry
First published by Willan Publishing 2004
This edition published by Routledge 2012
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
This edition published by Routledge 2012
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2004 Michael Tonry
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting copying in the UK issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
Hardback
ISBN 13: 978-1-84392-063-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-84392-063-2
Paperback
ISBN 13: 978-1-84392-062-5
ISBN 13: 978-1-84392-062-5
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Project management by Deer Park Productions,Tavistock, Devon
Typeset by GCS, Leighton Buzzard, Beds
Typeset by GCS, Leighton Buzzard, Beds
Contents
Preface
Why is England the only major Western country whose government has chosen to emulate American crime-control policies and politics of the past quarter century?
It is puzzling.
During the 1970s and 1980s, England suffered from the same steeply rising crime rates that all Western countries did. And during the 1990s, England like other Western countries enjoyed sharply declining crime rates. Throughout the Western world, and in Eastern Europe, crime rates fell, whether imprisonment rates were high or low, rising or falling; whether police styles were traditional or innovative; whether nationwide crime-prevention initiatives were extensive or nonexistent. No matter what governments did or didnt do, crime rates fell.
Since the 1980s, many senior English practitioners, policy analysts and researchers have agreed, with their counterparts throughout Europe, that punishment practices and imprisonment patterns have little effect on crime rates and trends. Those are caused by broad-based social, economic and normative changes and the power of primary socializing institutions like families, schools and churches. In Labours tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime mantra, its the causes that matter.
And yet in 2004, England has implemented Europes only three-strikes-and-youre-out law and American-style mandatory minimum sentence laws. Earlier it experimented with boot camps and zero-tolerance policing. Englands government employs the most hyperbolic anti-crime rhetoric of any in Europe, language that elsewhere characterizes xenophobic right-wing fringe parties. Blair, Le Pen and Fortuyn are an odd and unexpected trio.
England has the highest imprisonment rate in Europe and the most rapidly rising prison population. And Parliament late in 2003 enacted a Criminal Justice Act full of symbolic tough-on-crime measures, some of which are sure more often to result in wrongful convictions of innocent people.
Since the 1980s, many senior English practitioners, policy analysts and researchers have celebrated, with their counterparts throughout Europe, the expansion of procedural protections of human rights in the criminal justice system. And yet the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is bedecked with provisions withdrawing and weakening procedural protections afforded people accused of crimes.
A possible reason why England alone is emulating the United States is that American policies have been marvellously successful, but somehow only English policy-makers have noticed. This isnt and cant be true.
Many of the most notorious American innovations, including some that England has embraced and others it has considered, have been conspicuously unsuccessful, and at devastating social and economic cost. Most informed people across the American political spectrum accept that three-strikes, mandatory minimum and truth-in-sentencing laws have had few if any crime-reduction effects. They have, however, produced unjustly severe punishments, ballooned the prison population, and, once enacted, proven remarkably hard to repeal.
Similarly, most informed observers now recognize that zero-tolerance policing had little to do with New York Citys crime-rate declines in the 1990s (most other large American cities enjoyed similar declines whatever their policing styles), but resulted in large increases in police violence, racial confrontation, and unnecessary imprisonment.
American policies have had enormous, widely acknowledged costs much the highest imprisonment rate among Western countries, the lengthiest prison sentences in the world, increasing numbers of executions, a third of its young black men under criminal justice system supervision, an iatrogenic War on Drugs and unhappy recognition in many states that prisons are receiving vast sums that would be better spent on education or health care.
All across the United States, judges, prosecutors, and legislators are changing direction. Mandatory minimum and three-strikes laws are much less often invoked. States are repealing tough laws, releasing people from prison earlier and creating new drug treatment and other policies meant to divert people from prison.
I am confident that most senior civil servants in the Home Office agree with much of what Ive said in the preceding paragraphs its a fair summary of the policy and research literatures, and of recent American developments and have themselves said similar things to ministers. Ministers have refused to listen.
The current Labour government has knowingly adopted policies known to be ineffective or unlikely to work because of an arguable belief that its own continuation in office justifies the unnecessary human suffering and waste of public resources that its policies produce.
Policy-makers adopt bad policies for four kinds of reasons evidence, ignorance, ideology and self-interest. Sometimes they believe, wrongly but honestly, that existing evidence gives valid reasons to believe that policies will have wanted effects. Sometimes they act ignorantly, simply not knowing that what seems a good idea isnt. Sometimes they are so influenced by ideology or political self-interest that they adopt policies primarily for symbolic reasons, without knowing or caring whether they will work.
The last is what happened in England. Deliberate decisions to emulate harsh American crime-control policies in general, and Bill Clintons political approach to crime (Dont let your opponents look tougher than you do) in particular, are among the results. So are sky-rocketing prison populations, worsening racial disparities, demoralized officials and avoidable suffering by offenders, their loved ones and their communities.
To an American, resident now in England for five years, who long admired the rationality, decency and moderation of Englands criminal justice system, especially in comparison with the United States, all that I have described is perplexing. Until the early 1990s only America developed an hyperbolic law-and-order politics and cruel, simplistic policies that were based more on ideology and politicians perceived self-interest than on evidence or acceptance of human frailty. And then in the early 1990s, England broke ranks with other Western countries and began to emulate American politics and policies.
Why, I wondered, and with what effects?
In this book, I attempt to disentangle the influences of evidence, ignorance, ideology and self-interest in New Labours crime policies and its recent proposals for changes to the criminal justice system. In the first half, I examine central proposals in the recent White Paper
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «Punishment and Politics»
Look at similar books to Punishment and Politics. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Adrian Barton
Cliff Roberson
Michael J Coyle
Lawrence F. Travis III
Richard Gordon Wright
Reviews about «Punishment and Politics»
Discussion, reviews of the book Punishment and Politics and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.