Sentencing Policy and Social Justice

Sentencing Policy and Social Justice
Author: Ralph Henham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191029041

Sentencing Policy and Social Justice argues that the promotion of social justice should become a key objective of sentencing policy, advancing the argument that the legitimacy of sentencing ultimately depends upon the strength of the relationship between social morality and penal ideology. It sheds light on how shared moral values can influence sentencing policy at a time when relationships of community appear increasingly fragmented, arguing that sentencing will be better placed to make a positive contribution to social justice if it becomes more sensitive to the commonly-accepted moral boundaries that underpin adherence to the 'rule of law'. The need to reflect public opinion in sentencing has received significant attention more recently, with renewed interest in jury sentencing, 'stakeholder sentencing', and the involvement of community views when regulating policy. The author, however, advocates a different approach, combining a new theoretical focus with practical suggestions for reform, and arguing that the contribution sentencing can make to social justice necessitates a fundamental change in the way shared values about the advantages of punishment are reflected in penal ideology and sentencing policy. Using examples from international, comparative and domestic contexts to advance the moral and ethical case for challenging the existing theories of sentencing, the book develops the author's previous theoretical ideas and outlines how these changes could be given practical shape within the context of sentencing in England and Wales. It assesses the consequences for penal governance due to increased state regulation of discretionary sentencing power and examines the prospects for achieving the kind of moral transformation regarded as necessary to reverse such a move. To illustrate these issues each chapter focuses on a particularly problematic area for contemporary sentencing policy; namely, the sentencing of women; the sentencing of irregular migrants; sentencing for offences of serious public disorder; and sentencing for financial crime.

Sentencing: A Social Process

Sentencing: A Social Process
Author: Cyrus Tata
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2019-12-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030010600

This book asks how we should make sense of sentencing when, despite huge efforts world-wide to analyse, critique and reform it, it remains an enigma.Sentencing: A Social Process reveals how both research and policy-thinking about sentencing are confined by a paradigm that presumes autonomous individualism, projecting an artificial image of sentencing practices and policy potential. By conceiving of sentencing instead as a social process, the book advances new policy and research agendas. Sentencing: A Social Process proposes innovative solutions to classic conundrums, including: rules versus discretion; aggravating versus mitigating factors; individualisation versus consistency; punishment versus rehabilitation; efficient technologies versus the quality of justice; and ways of reducing imprisonment.

Women, Punishment and Social Justice

Women, Punishment and Social Justice
Author: Margaret Malloch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2013-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136193707

The prison has often been the focus for concerns about human rights violations, and campaigns aimed at achieving social justice, for those with an interest in the criminalisation of women. To reduce the number of women imprisoned, a range of policy initiatives have been developed to increase the use of community-based responses to women in conflict with the law. These initiatives have tended to operate alongside reforms to the prison estate and are often defined as ‘community punishment’, ‘community sanctions’ and ‘alternatives to imprisonment’. This book challenges the contention that improved regimes and provisions within the criminal justice system are capable of addressing human rights concerns and the needs of the criminalised woman. This book aims to provide a critical analysis of approaches and experiences of penal sanctions, human rights and social justice as enacted in different jurisdictions within and beyond the UK. Drawing on international knowledge and expertise, the contributors to this book challenge the efficacy of gender-responsive interventions by examining issues affecting women in the criminal justice system such as mental health, age, and ethnicity. Crucially, the book will engage with the paradox of implementing rights within a largely punishment-orientated system. This book will be of interest to those taking undergraduate and post-graduate courses that examine punishment, gender and justice, and which lend themselves to an international / comparative aspect such as criminal justice/criminology, (international) criminal justice courses; sociology as well as professional training for practitioners (criminal justice, social work, health) who work with women in the criminal justice system.

Sentencing and the Legitimacy of Trial Justice

Sentencing and the Legitimacy of Trial Justice
Author: Ralph Henham
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-05-15
Genre: Criminal justice, Administration of
ISBN: 9780415833950

This book discusses the under-researched relationship between sentencing and the legitimacy of punishment. It argues that there is an increasing gap between what is perceived as legitimate punishment and the sentencing decisions of the criminal courts. Drawing on a wide variety of empirical research evidence, the book explores how sentencing could be developed within a more socially-inclusive framework for the delivery of trial justice. In the international context, such developments are directly relevant to the future role of the International Criminal Court, especially its ability to deliver more coherent and inclusive trial outcomes that contribute to social reconstruction. Similarly, in the national context, these issues have a vital role to play in helping to re-position trial justice as a credible cornerstone of criminal justice governance where social diversity persists. In so doing the book should help policy-makers in appreciating the likely implications for criminal trials of 'mainstreaming' restorative forms of justice. Sentencing and the Legitimacy of Trial Justice firmly ties the issue of legitimacy to the relevant context for delivering 'justice'. It suggests a need to develop the tools and methods for achieving this and offers some novel solutions to this complex problem. This book will be a valuable resource for graduate students, academics, practitioners and policy makers in the field of criminal justice as well as scholars interested in socio-legal and cross-disciplinary approaches to the analysis of criminal process and sentencing and the development of theory and comparative methodology in this area.

Criminal Justice at the Crossroads

Criminal Justice at the Crossroads
Author: William R. Kelly
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231539223

Over the past forty years, the criminal justice system in the United States has engaged in a very expensive policy failure, attempting to punish its way to public safety, with dismal results. So-called "tough on crime" policies have not only failed to effectively reduce crime, recidivism, and victimization but also created an incredibly inefficient system that routinely fails the public, taxpayers, crime victims, criminal offenders, their families, and their communities. Strategies that focus on behavior change are much more productive and cost effective for reducing crime than punishment, and in this book, William R. Kelly discusses the policy, process, and funding innovations and priorities that the United States needs to effectively reduce crime, recidivism, victimization, and cost. He recommends proactive, evidence-based interventions to address criminogenic behavior; collaborative decision making from a variety of professions and disciplines; and a focus on innovative alternatives to incarceration, such as problem-solving courts and probation. Students, professionals, and policy makers alike will find in this comprehensive text a bracing discussion of how our criminal justice system became broken and the best strategies by which to fix it.

Crime and Justice, Volume 48

Crime and Justice, Volume 48
Author: Michael Tonry
Publisher: University of Chicago Press Journals
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-06-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780226644912

American Sentencing provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of efforts in the state and the federal systems to make sentencing fairer, reduce overuse of imprisonment, and help offenders live law-abiding lives. It addresses a variety of topics and themes related to sentencing and reform, including racial disparities, violence prediction, plea negotiation, case processing, federal and state guidelines, California’s historic “realignment,” and more. This volume covers what students, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers need to know about how sentencing really works, what a half century’s “reforms” have and have not accomplished, how sentencing processes can be made fairer, and how sentencing outcomes can be made more just. Its writers are among America’s leading scholarly specialists—often the leading specialist—in their fields. Clearly and accessibly written, American Sentencing is ideal for teaching use in seminars and courses on sentencing, courts, and criminal justice. Its authors’ diverse perspectives shed light on these issues, making it likely the single, most authoritative source of information on the state of sentencing in America today.

Penal Populism, Sentencing Councils and Sentencing Policy

Penal Populism, Sentencing Councils and Sentencing Policy
Author: Arie Freiberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-03-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 131782184X

Public outcries and political platforms based on misinformation and misconceptions about the criminal justice system and current sentencing practice occur all too often in democratic societies. Penal Populism, Sentencing Councils and Sentencing Policy attempts to address this problem by bringing together important contributions from a number of distinguished experts in the field. Penal Populism presents theoretical perspectives on the role of the public in the development of sentencing policy. It places particular emphasis on the emerging role of sentencing commissions, advisory councils or panels in a number of English speaking countries: Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Scotland and South Africa. The book explains, expands and develops the existing literature that looks at public attitudes to justice and the role that the 'public' can play in influencing policy. Written in a scholarly yet accessible style, Penal Populism asks the critical questions: should 'public opinion', or preferably, 'public judgment' be relevant to court decision-making, to institutional decision-making and to the political process? And if so, how?

Criminal and Social Justice

Criminal and Social Justice
Author: Dee Cook
Publisher: Pine Forge Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2006-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1446225585

·· See Sample Chapters & Resources to download the Introduction to Criminal and Social Justice ·· `Dee Cook′s new book is important, innovative and invigorating. It brings together two spheres - criminal justice and social justice - which are usually, but as she persuades us, unjustifiably kept separate intellectually and in policy and practice. Dee Cook makes a powerful case for the inter-connectedness of penal policy and social policy, bringing together concepts from the two spheres such as social exclusion, citizenship, and human rights. Her innovative approach brings insightful theoretical analysis together with two extended case studies - differential treatment of tax fraud and benefit fraud, and the "third way" politics of New Labour. This book will make it much more difficult for students, policy-makers and criminal justice practitioners to ignore the social context in which penal policy evolves and is implemented′ - Professor Barbara Hudson, University of Central Lancashire `This is an accessible and lively critical account of the inter-relationship between social and criminal justice in New Labour Britain. It should engage students on a range of programmes, particularly social policy, criminology and sociology′ - Ruth Lister, Professor of Social Policy, Loughborough University `A cogent demonstration that criminal justice cannot be achieved in the absence of social justice. There is a blistering but thoroughly informed critique of New Labour′s failure to narrow this "justice gap". Let′s hope the carefully reasoned but impassioned arguments about how to get really tough on the causes of crime and injustice get the attention they deserve′ - Robert Reiner, Professor of Criminology, London School of Economics and Political Science Criminal and Social Justice provides an important insight into the relationship between social inequality, crime and criminalisation. In this accessible and innovative account, Dee Cook examines the nature of the relationship between criminal and social justice - both in theory and in practice. Current social, economic, political and cultural considerations are brought to bear, and contemporary examples are used throughout to help the student to consider this relationship. The book is essential reading for students and researchers in criminology, social policy, social work and sociology. It is also relevant to practitioners in statutory, voluntary and community sector organisations.

Sentencing and Punishment

Sentencing and Punishment
Author: Susan Easton
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2012-06-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199693536

This text presents an overview of sentencing and punishment from penological, social policy and legal perspectives. It provides an accessible account of the changing attitudes of the public, policy makers and the judiciary regarding what constitutes 'just' punishment.

Being Imprisoned

Being Imprisoned
Author: M. Schinkel
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2014-10-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113744083X

Exploring the way in which criminal punishment is interpreted and narrated by offenders, this book examines the meaning offenders ascribe to their sentence and the consequences of this for future desistance.