Spanning almost a century of penal policy and practice in England and Wales, this book is a study of the long arc of the rehabilitative ideal, beginning in 1895, the year of the Gladstone Committee on Prisons, and ending in 1970, when the policy of treating and training criminals was very much on the defensive. Drawing on a plethora of source material, such as the official papers of mandarins, ministers, and magistrates, measures of public opinion, prisoner memoirs, publications of penal reform groups and prison officers, the reports of Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees, political opinion in both Houses of Parliament and the research of the first cadre of criminologists, this book comprehensively examines a number of aspects of the British penal system, including judicial sentencing, law-making, and the administration of legal penalties. In doing so, Victor Bailey expertly weaves a complex and nuanced picture of punishment in twentieth-century England and Wales, one that incorporates the enduring influence of the death penalty, and will force historians to revise their interpretation of twentieth-century social and penal policy. This detailed and ground-breaking account of the rise and fall of the rehabilitative ideal will be essential reading for scholars and students of the history of crime and justice and historical criminology, as well as those interested in social and legal history.

How do Supreme Court justices decide their cases? Do they follow their policy preferences? Or are they constrained by the law and by other political actors? The Constrained Court combines new theoretical insights and extensive data analysis to show that law and politics together shape the behavior of justices on the Supreme Court. Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman show how two types of constraints have influenced the decision making of the modern Court. First, Bailey and Maltzman document that important legal doctrines, such as respect for precedents, have influenced every justice since 1950. The authors find considerable variation in how these doctrines affect each justice, variation due in part to the differing experiences justices have brought to the bench. Second, Bailey and Maltzman show that justices are constrained by political factors. Justices are not isolated from what happens in the legislative and executive branches, and instead respond in predictable ways to changes in the preferences of Congress and the president. The Constrained Court shatters the myth that justices are unconstrained actors who pursue their personal policy preferences at all costs. By showing how law and politics interact in the construction of American law, this book sheds new light on the unique role that the Supreme Court plays in the constitutional order.