Thinking about Crime: Sense and Sensibility in American Penal Culture

Crime is an American preoccupation. Campaigns such as "the war on drugs," zero tolerance policing, and three strikes and you're out–not to mention the ever-shrill coverage of crime stories-all suggest a perpetually outraged nation determined to keep its criminal element at bay, no matter the cost.

But is this really what average Americans think about crime and crime control measures? Or is the "no holds barred" approach merely another oscillation in an ongoing cycle of intolerance and tolerance in American thinking? Have prevailing but short-lived sensibilities on crime overruled our common sense?

In this wide-ranging analysis, Michael Tonry argues that those responsible for crafting America's criminal justice policy have lost their way in a forest of good intentions, political cynicism, and public anxieties. American crime control politics over time have created a punishment system no one would knowingly have chosen yet one that no one seems able to change. Fueled by knee-jerk rhetoric and moral panics, the current crime control regime is founded on short-term thinking and the personal ambitions of politicians terrified of appearing "soft on crime," rather than on policies that work.