Punishing Criminals: Developing Community-Based Intermediate Sanctions

by Malcolm Davies

Overview

Punishing Criminals is about sentencing theory and policy and the attempt to identify punishments other than imprisonment. Davies argues for the need to develop more credible and effective community-based intermediate sanctions that have the confidence of the public and the officials in the criminal system. He shows how focus groups can be used to improve the process of consultation. He sees the need to locate sentencing policy decisions within the wider context of the criminal justice process and presents empirical evidence from ten years study of the California criminal justice system. He sets out a denunciatory-retributive rationale for punishment which links sentencing aims with a community's confidence in different forms of punishment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313280337
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/28/1993
Series:	Contributions in Criminology and Penology , #41
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

MALCOLM DAVIES, Professor of Penology in the Law School of Thames Valley University in London, has published a number of studies dealing with intermediate sanctions. He was a Senior Research Fellow in the Bureau of Criminal Statistics in California's Attorney General's Office and a visiting scholar at the University of California at Davis Law School and at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Penal Aims and Public Confidence
The Multiple Objectives of the Penal System
A Denunciatory-Retributive Rationale for Punishment
What Will Float? Public Confidence in Sentencing Policy
Penal Limbo: Answered Prayers?
The Rise, Demise and Redefinition of Rehabilitation
The Blue Ribbon Commission's Report in California
Getting Tough on Crime
"Disjointed Expansionism" in California
Expansion in California: Survey of Criminal Justice Officials
Prison Capacity and Costs: Impact on Criminal Justice Decisions
Demands for a Systems Approach
Penal Reform: Will it be all Right on the Night?
Penal Reform—When the Practical and the Ideological Coincide
Getting it Right on the Night—the Use of Focus Groups
California Focus Group Study
What Role for Intermediate Sanctions?
The Goals of Intermediate Sanctions
A Cocktail of a Sentence: Making Intermediate Sanctions Palatable
Criminal Justice Officials' Views on Intermediate Sanctions
The Public Mood
References
Index