This collection examines the perennial tension between society's need to protect its citizens from crime, while assuring that the crime control and reduction measures that it enacts do not deny basic rights or exacerbate the socioeconomic inequality that gives rise to disparate rates of offending. Such tension exists in all modern societies, but it has been particularly evident in the United States, a nation whose history manifests both group inequality and an ongoing effort to reduce such inequality, assure fairness, equal protection, and due process for individuals. Focusing largely on developments in criminal justice policies and practices enacted during the last few decades, the essays in this volume explore the delicate balance between governmental crime control efforts and professed goals of promoting social justice and protecting civil liberties.

Representing disciplines ranging from criminology to economics, geography, law, sociology, and political science, the contributors critically examine and debate the nature and impact of recent and contemporary American criminal justice policies. Particular attention is paid to the impact of such policies on the nation's racial divide, but the authors use this disparity to illustrate the broader public policy paradoxes and dilemmas which lie at the heart of the struggle to control rising crime rates. Purported reforms in sentencing, the nation's growing prison population, the war on drugs and gangs, the demise of juvenile court, racial profiling and affirmative action are all grist for the mill. Contributors also ask more philosophical and epistemological questions such as the meaning of social justice, fairness, and justice and their relevance for understanding contemporary criminal justice.