Doing Justice, Preventing Crime

Michael Tonry

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Challenges punitive ways of thought
Shows injustice of current punishment policies
Provides guidance for better policies and more humane approaches to punishment

Doing Justice, Preventing Crime

Michael Tonry

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Description

Punishment policies and practices in the United States today are unprincipled, chaotic, and much too often unjust. The financial costs are enormous. The moral cost is greater: countless individual injustices, mass incarceration, the world's highest imprisonment rate, extreme disparities, especially affecting members of racial and ethnic minority groups, high rates of wrongful conviction, assembly line case processing, and a general absence of respectful consideration of offenders' interests, circumstances, and needs.

In Doing Justice, Preventing Crime, Michael Tonry lays normative and empirical foundations for building new, more just, and more effective systems of sentencing and punishment in the twenty-first century. The overriding goals are to treat people convicted of crimes justly, fairly, and even-handedly; to take sympathetic account of the circumstances of peoples' lives; and to punish no one more severely than he or she deserves. Drawing on philosophy and punishment theory, this book explains the structural changes needed to uphold the rule of law and its requirement that the human dignity of every person be respected.

In clear and engaging prose, Michael Tonry surveys what is known about the deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative effects of punishment, and explains what needs to be done to move from an ignoble present to a better future.

Doing Justice, Preventing Crime

Michael Tonry

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Doing Justice, Preventing Crime

Michael Tonry

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Author Information

Michael Tonry is McKnight Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and Policy and Director of the Institute on Crime and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota. He has published a number of books and articles in the US and Europe and taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Lausanne, and Minnesota. He was Professor of Law and Public Policy and Director of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. Previous books on punishment theory and philosophy include Why Punish? How Much? (OUP 2011), Retributivism Has a Past. Has it a Future? (OUP 2011), and Of One-eyed and Toothless Miscreants: Making the Punishment Fit the Crime? (OUP 2020).

Doing Justice, Preventing Crime

Michael Tonry

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Reviews and Awards

"Michael Tonry, the world's leading authority on sentencing, has distilled almost 50 years of experience and scholarship into this compact, landmark volume. Doing Justice, Preventing Crime summarizes his latest thinking and contains a series of important policy lessons for politicians and policy makers in all western nations."--Julian Roberts, Faculty of law, University of Oxford

"In Doing Justice, Preventing Crime Michael Tonry does a masterful job of assessing how scholars have conceived of sentencing philosophy from the time of Jeremy Bentham to the modern day. He provides us with a framework for structuring sentencing systems premised on human dignity that achieve fairness and address the disturbing moral and practical outcomes of the mass incarceration era."--Marc Mauer, Executive Director, The Sentencing Project

"As the wave that brought mass incarceration to the United States is cresting, Michael Tonry expertly brings punishment theory back full circle, to rebuild the rehabilitative vision that guided justice before the storm. This wonderful new book is a must read not just for those who care about punishment philosophy, but any who care about restoring justice to our criminal justice system."-Brandon Garrett, L. Neil Williams Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law

"Doing Justice, Preventing Crime is a capstone accomplishment in Michael Tonry's illustrious career. The scholarly arguments articulated here are trenchant and do not shy from controversy. Written in a highly accessible style, this magisterial work will have a profound impact on law, philosophy, and criminology. It is nothing less than the definitive book on sentencing in the 21st century."--John Monahan, Shannon Distinguished Professor of Law and Psychology, University of Virginia