AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Does Prison Work? (Choice in Welfare , No 38) by Charles Murray ISBN: 0-255-36398-2 Publisher: Institute of Economic Affairs Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.50

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 2 (1 review)

Rating: 2
Summary: Provocation Rules!
Comment: Charles murray is almost guaranteed a response to anything he might say in Britain. It is almost as if a cheerful 'Good Morning' would lead to an almost instantaneous rebuttal from the establishment over there.

This book, drawn from two articles which appeared in that paragon of academic and scholastic excellence, the 'Sunday Times', achieves it's goal of having the thesis of prisons work refuted.

Alas, it is hardly a difficult thing to achieve that result. Mr. Murray is a well versed practitioner of the use of statistics tom prove his point. His works, characteristically guaranteed to raise the hackles, are very thought provoking and deserve serious consideration. Indeed there is much to commend them in general. Here, however, this short polemic is too narrow in scope to be judges a definitive contribution to the debate on crime and punishment. Certainly the simplistic point he makes tends to elicit a closed end response and to cause the creation of antagonistic camps but he as an author knows that this is not enough.

Prisons, of themselves, are insufficient to consider when crime and punishment are under the microscope. They too are social institutions and their organisation falls prey to the dominant ideologies of the day. They are in general government run or regulated institutions which face little or no competitive pressures from other institutions. Also they will house those who are deemed by the social order to be criminals when their only crimes may be non-payment of fines or the perennial use of recreational drugs which are of themselves less harmful than their legal counterparts such as alcohol.

Prisons do not exist in vacuums. They clearly work in the sense that they lead to an immediate reduction in crime but their long term use may be more destructive. Although the recent experience comes sometime after the publication of this book, anecdotally, the huge prison populations of the United States have not, over the longer term contributed to a permanent dimunition of crimes nor to a marked decline in serious crimes which involve fatalities. Indeed it may be remarked that greater incarceration makes the likelihood of murders and serial killings more rather than less likely as the perpetrator has nothing to lose. You only die once so to speak.

This book is certainly provocative whichever side of the argument you may be on if you have chosen a side. Good knockabout stuff but hardly a serious contribution to the academic or social debate.

Not up to the usual IEA standard.