Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice, 1950-1990

by Samuel E. Walker

It is a truism that the administration of criminal justice consists of a series of discretionary decisions by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials. Taming the System is a history of the forty-year effort to control the discretion. It examines the discretion problem from the initial "discovery" of the phenomenon by the American Bar Foundation in the 1950s through to the most recent evaluation research on reform measures. Of enormous value to scholars, reformers, and criminal justice professionals, this book approaches the discretion problem through a detailed examination of four decision policing, bail setting, plea bargaining, and sentencing. In a field which largely produces short-ranged "evaluation research," this study, in taking a wider approach, distinguishes between the role of administrative bodies (the police) and evaluates the longer-term trends and the successful reforms in criminal justice history.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Samuel Walker is Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, where he taught for 31 years before retiring in 2005. He is the author of 13 books on policing, criminal justice history and policy, and civil liberties. His current research involves police accountability, focusing primarily on citizen oversight of the police and police Early Intervention Systems (EIS). Originally trained as a historian, he is completing a book on U.S. presidents and civil liberties. His personal website, with information on police accountability is: http: //samuelwalker.net.

Reviews

[Maya Holsopple]

had to read for class but learning about the discretionary phases in the criminal justice system was very cool