Thinking about Punishment: Penal Policy Across Space, Time and Discipline

by Tonry,Michael

• ISBN13: 9780754629054
• ISBN10: 0754629058
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Thinking about Punishment" pulls together writings by Michael Tonry on penal policy trends in western countries, racial and ethnic disparities, and sentencing policies, practices, and theories. Those three clusters of topics are not usually treated together, but recent decades' research shows that they are inextricably interrelated. Distinct historical and cultural characteristics of countries offer the best explanations of national patterns of punishment at any one time and over time. More general theories and models fall apart when applied to individual national experiences. In the United States, the key factors explaining both penal policy trends and sentencing patterns and policies include historical patterns of race relations, obsolete constitutional arrangements, and moral attitudes related to the continental expansion of the United States and the country's fundamentalist Protestant religious origins. Comparable - but different - characteristics explain other countries' experiences.