Across the country prisons are jammed to capacity and, in extreme cases, barges and mobile homes are used to
stem the overflow. Probation officers in some cities have caseloads of 200 and more--hardly a manageable number
of offenders to track and supervise. And with about one million people in prison and jail, and two and a half million
on probation, it is clear we are experiencing a crisis in our penal system.
In Between Prison and Probation, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, two of the nation's leading criminologists, offer
an important and timely strategy for alleviating these problems. They argue that our overwhelmed corrections system
cannot cope with the flow of convicted offenders because the two extremes of punishment--imprisonment and probation--are
both used excessively, with a near-vacuum of useful punishments in between. Morris and Tonry propose instead a
comprehensive program that relies on a range of punishment including fines and other financial sanctions, community
service, house arrest, intensive probation, closely supervised treatment programs for drugs, alcohol and mental
illness, and electronic monitoring of movement. Used in rational combinations, these "intermediate" punishments
would better serve the community than our present polarised choice. Serious consideration of these punishments
has been hindered by the widespread perception that they are therapeutic rather than punitive. The reality, however,
Morris and Tonry argue, "is that the American criminal justice system is both too severe and too lenient--almost
randomly." Systematically implemented and rigorously enforced, intermediate punishments can "better and
more economically serve the community, the victim, and the criminal than the prison terms and probation orders
they supplant."
Between Prison and Probation goes beyond mere advocacy of an increasing use of intermediate punishments; the book
also addresses the difficult task of fitting these punishments into a comprehensive, fair and community-protective
sentencing system.
