|
Product Description
America’s criminal justice policy reflects irrational fears stoked by politicians seeking to win election. A preeminent legal scholar argues that reform guided by evidence, not politics and emotions, will reduce crime and reverse mass incarceration.
The United States has the world’s highest rate of incarceration, a form of punishment that ruins lives and makes a return to prison more likely. As awful as that truth is for individuals and their families, its social consequences―recycling offenders through an overwhelmed criminal justice system, ever-mounting costs, unequal treatment before the law, and a growing class of permanently criminalized citizens―are even more devastating. With the authority of a prominent legal scholar and the practical insights gained through on-the-ground work on criminal justice reform, Rachel Barkow explains how dangerous it is to base criminal justice policy on the whims of the electorate, which puts judges, sheriffs, and politicians in office. Instead, she argues for an institutional shift toward data and expertise, following the model used to set food and workplace safety rules.
Barkow’s prescriptions are rooted in a thorough and refreshingly ideology-free cost–benefit analysis of how to cut mass incarceration while maintaining public safety. She points to specific policies that are deeply problematic on moral grounds and have failed to end the cycle of recidivism. Her concrete proposals draw on the best empirical information available to prevent crime and improve the reentry of former prisoners into society.
Prisoners of Politics aims to free criminal justice policy from the political arena, where it has repeatedly fallen prey to irrational fears and personal interest, and demonstrates that a few simple changes could make us all safer.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- Constitutional Law: A Contemporary Approach (Interactive Casebook Series)
- Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System
- Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
- Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison: Life in the Year After Prison
- Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
- Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
- Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration-and How to Achieve Real Reform
- Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair
- Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (American Casebook Series)
- Property: Principles and Policies (University Casebook Series)
*If this is not the "Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Nov 24, 2024 17:38 +08.