This book is a ... for thoughtful legislators and all the rest of us who seek justice for persons charged with crimes-proportional punishment of the guilty, and exculpation of the morally blameless. The authors demonstrate, with remarkable lucidity, how and why the criminal law sometimes deliberately sacrifices justice for other goals, and they provide thoughtful, controversial, and often persuasive suggestions on how we can redesign our legal system to give people their just deserts. [In the book, the authors offer an] account of how the American criminal justice system fails to give offenders their just deserts in a number of different contexts. From the refusal to allow partial exoneration for defenses like mistake of law and insanity to the practical limitations on detecting and prosecuting offenders, [they also] demonstrate through ... discussions of actual cases the many areas where criminal sentencing fails to do justice. -Dust jacket.

The Fourth Edition is available for online and hybrid courses and is also customizable in inexpensive paperback forms with other materials instructors may wish to assign their students. The text and its companion website has been designed for use in online and hybrid courses as well as in conventional "bricks and mortar" classes. The text is also customizable in inexpensive paperback format, instructors may select only those chapters which they wish to assign.

The over-representation of minorities, particularly African Amer., in the nation¿s prisons has received much attention in recent years. However, the disproportionate representation of racial/ethnic groups is not limited to adult prisons and jails. It is also found among youth confined in secure juvenile facilities. Since many data systems fail to disaggregate ethnicity from race, Latino youth are often counted as ¿White.¿ As a result, data on the extent to which minority populations are over-represented in the juvenile justice system are generally underreported in the analysis of this issue. This report presents several sources of data and utilizes both original and previously published analysis. Tables and graphs.