Thinking about Crime: Sense and Sensibility in American Penal Culture

In this wide-ranging analysis, Michael Tonry argues that those responsible for crafting America's criminal justice policy have lost their way in a forest of good intentions, political cynicism, and public anxieties. American crime control politics over time have created a punishment system no one would knowingly have chosen yet one that no one seems able to change. Prevailing sensibilities rather than timeless truths govern the American war on crime, resulting in policies both wasteful and ha…