Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice, 1950-1990

Walker, Samuel

ISBN 10: 0195078209 / ISBN 13: 9780195078206

Published by Oxford University Press, 1993

About this Item

Cover and edges may have some wear.

Seller Inventory # mon0004084027

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice, 1950-1990
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195078209
• ISBN 13: 9780195078206
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

It is a truism that the administration of criminal justice consists of a series of discretionary decisions by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials. Taming the System is a history of the forty-year effort to control the discretion. It examines the discretion problem from the initial "discovery" of the phenomenon by the American Bar Foundation in the 1950s through to the most recent evaluation research on reform measures. Of enormous value to scholars, reformers, and criminal justice professionals, this book approaches the discretion problem through a detailed examination of four decision points: policing, bail setting, plea bargaining, and sentencing. In a field which largely produces short-ranged "evaluation research," this study, in taking a wider approach, distinguishes between the role of administrative bodies (the police) and evaluates the longer-term trends and the successful reforms in criminal justice history.

About the Author

Samuel Walker is at University of Nebraska at Omaha.