Harm in American Penology: Offenders, Victims, and Their Communities

Todd R. Clear

Nov. 1994 · State University of New York Press

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This book analyzes the sources and results of the fourfold increase in the U.S. correctional population since 1970. It considers the following themes: the value of punitiveness, defined as penal harm; research on crime and criminals; concerns about victims of crime; and concerns about community safety. It also analyzes the relationship between social problems and penal harm, such as poverty and crime during the twenty-year period of correctional expansion.

The author argues that a careful review of proposals for expanded penal harm cannot be justified. The growth in corrections was not caused by crime nor has it reduced crime. Clear describes a new strategy for corrections based on his examination of the politics of social control and the growth in penal harm.

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Todd R. Clear is Professor and Faculty Chair in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. He is the author of Controlling the Offender in the Community, American Corrections, and The Pre-Sentence Investigation Report. Professor Clear was the recipient of the 1986 Cincinnati Award of the American Probation and Parole Association for his research on supervision technologies.