Review by Choice Review
Examining systems for sentencing criminal offenders, Tonry (Univ. of Minnesota School of Law) writes an important book detailing the changes necessary to reforming mass incarceration in the US. His book comprises six chapters and covers historical and contemporary issues related to incarceration. Tonry details the arbitrary punishment that has taken place across the US over several generations. He weaves socio-legal literature and case law to show the history of prisons as a series of political, legal, and legislative bumbles. The middle chapters explain how sentencing guidelines, or certainly those guidelines from past decades, have severely increased arbitrary punishments and racial disparities. Tonry is especially helpful in detailing how this has evolved into a national epidemic, one that politicians generally want to avoid. The book closes by providing a commonsense approach to the constitutional issues surrounding the prison industrial complex. This progressive and valuable book is best suited for graduate students, law students, scholars, and those interested in criminal justice. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students to professionals. --Aaron RS Lorenz, Ramapo College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
