Pfaff's Sentencing Law and Policy

This casebook provides a broad overview of sentencing policy in the United States, examining both the specific legal rules and the wider implications of punishment on offenders and communities. Unlike the competing books, it adopts an institutional, social scientific perspective. A defining aspect of sentencing law in the US is that there isn’t all that much “law”. The various actors (police, prosecutors, judges, etc.) have wide discretion, and sentencing outcomes are frequently driven by the often competing interests of these agencies. This casebook puts these institutional interactions at the forefront, and it pushes students to think carefully about the critical role they play in shaping outcomes. It also takes advantage of the author’s training as an empirical economist to incorporate (in plain English!) the latest cutting-edge social scientific evidence on why we punish, and on the effects of these policies.