The Oxford Handbook of Sentencing and Corrections

Sentencing is the process by which criminal sanctions are authorized and imposed on individuals following criminal convictions; corrections deals with the implementation, administration, and evaluation of criminal sentences after they are handed down. Studies, classes, and policies of sentencing and corrections typically proceed without much consideration of the other even though the two subjects are intimately connected.The [Oxford] Handbook of Sentencing and Correctionsexplicitly acknowledges this link. It surveys American sentencing and corrections from global and historical views, from theoretical and policy perspectives, and with attention to a number of problem-specific issues. Each chapter presents the state-of-the-art knowledge in a given subject area, studies current practices, and articulates policy implications wherever possible. The book begins with a broad overview of issues influencing both sentencing and corrections, from mass incarceration to its collateral effects. The next segment discusses sentencing theories and their application before moving to sentencing systems and processes. The correctional context is reviewed in its entirety from community corrections, jails and prisons, correctional treatments, specific offender populations, and the crucial issue of prisoner release and reentry. Two chapters on life inside a prison and life after prison are written by current or former prisoners. Both leading figures in their respective fields, Joan Petersilia and Kevin Reitz have produced the standard reference on these two related and central components of America's ongoing experiment in mass incarceration.

Joan Petersilia is the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. She is the author of When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry and coeditor, with James Q. Wilson, of Crime and Public Policy.

Kevin R. Reitz is the James Annenberg Le Vea Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota. He currently serves as Reporter for the American Law Institute's project to revise the sentencing and corrections articles of the Model Penal Code. He is coauthor, with Henry Ruth, of The Challenge of Crime: Rethinking Our Response.