Pornography in a Free Society deals with what has been called the "civil war over smut." The past two decades have been high seasons for pornography commissions. They were appointed in the United States in 1968, in Great Britain in 1977, in Canada in 1985, and in the United States again in 1985. In the United States, the report of the first commission was denounced as a pornographer's charter and that of the second as a reflection of the moral militancy of the Reagan counterrevolution. The authors look at the problems of pornography in a broader perspective than that of partisan political debate. They explain why it has become so controversial and divisive an issue in Western nations in recent decades. They discuss the radical feminist challenge to pornography and the question of pornography and children. Considering likely future developments, the authors argue that the furor over pornography and the appointment of commissions are part of a "ceremony of adjustment" to widespread availability of sexually explicit material and they predict less social concern about pornography as time passes. Franklin E. Zimring is Professor of Law and Director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute. Gordon Hawkins is Senior Fellow, Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Together they have written Capital Punishment and the American Agenda (1986), and The Citizen's Guide to Gun Control (1987).

This book is the most comprehensive treatment of the politics and the impact of the 'get tough' criminal sentencing legislation in the US. It includes a major empirical study of the celebrated California 'three strikes' law, the law that imposed a 25-years to life imprisonment the moment of a third felony conviction. 'Three Strikes' is the single most important assault on criminal recidivists in the twentieth century. This book tells the story of how such a revolutionary shift in punishment policy became law, the impact of that legislation on criminal punishments and crime rates in California, and the broad implications of Three Strikes for the ways in which punishment policy is made in democratic governments.

This book presents a comprehensive examination of the drug control policy process in the United States. How are policy choices identified, debated and selected? How are the consequences of governmental policy measured and evaluated? How, if at all, do we learn from our mistakes. The first section deals with four different ways of understanding American drug policy: drug control as ideology, drugs as an issue of definition and measurement, an historical analysis of drug control, and finally, drug control as an occasion for debating the proper role of the criminal law. Zimring and Hawkins also discuss priority problems for drug control and provide a foundation for an improved policy process. They argue that protection of children and youth should shape policy toward illicit crime, with attention to the fact that youth protection objectives may limit the effectiveness of some drug controls.

This book presents a comprehensive examination of the drug control policy process in the United States. How are policy choices identified, debated, and selected? How are the consequences of governmental policy measured and evaluated? How, if at all, do we learn from our mistakes? The first part of the book deals with four different ways of understanding drug policy in the United States. Chapter 1 examines drug control as ideology; Chapter 2 discusses the issues of definition and measurement; Chapter 3 provides a historical analysis of drug control; and Chapter 4 concerns drug control as an occasion for debating the proper role of the criminal law. Part Two provides a foundation for an improved policy process by discussing priority problems for drug control. Chapter 5 shows how the protection of children and youth should shape policy toward illicit drugs, with attention to the fact that youth protection objectives may properly limit the effectiveness of some drug controls. Chapter 6 explores the central but complex relationship between illicit drugs and predatory crime. Chapter 7 addresses the proper role of the federal government in drug control policy. A final chapter criticizes the current national drug control strategy and makes five suggestions for improving the drug control policy process.

The death penalty is not simply the most serious criminal punishment. It has been a singular social, legal, and moral problem in the Western world over the past two hundred years. Capital punishment is disappearing from every nation in the West except the United States. No political science of capital punishment in the United States has been attempted until this book. Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins offer a redefinition of the central political and legal issues and a re-examination of the whole subject in the light of the social, political, and moral conditions of the United States in the 1980s. Lawyers, criminologists, political scientists, and motivated general readers will find the profile of a United States pursuing an active execution policy in the 1980s and 1990s to be an original and compelling contribution to the discussion of the future of the death penalty. Zimring and Hawkins's prediction for future policy, while based on historical precedent, is in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom about the United States Supreme Court. This book was first published in 1986.

This book is the definitive analysis of the politics and impact of "get tough" criminal sentencing legislation. Zimring, Hawkins, and Kamin examine the origins of the law in California, compare it to other crackdown laws, and analyse large samples of offenders arrested in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco in the year before and the two years after the law went into effect. The study presents compelling evidence that the new regime has been enormously over-rated as a crime prevention measure.

This book has three main aims: the first is to show that what separates the USA from other countries is not crime rates but lethal violence. Crimes like burglary and theft are a part of modern urban life worldwide; shootings and stabbings are not - they are particularly American. Why is this so? Secondly , the book seeks to clarify the causes of violence by looking at the proximate causes of deadly violence - guns, violence in the media, drugs and the tradition of lethal violence are all examined. The concluding section of the book concerns the prevention of lethal violence as a priority issue. The authors discuss a range of anti-violence alternatives from change in the criminal law to social and physical environmental factors and social values and attitudes.

This book is the first comprehensive assessment of incapacitation. Zimring and Hawkins shows the increasing reliance on restraint to justify imprisonment, analyse the existing theoretical literature on incapacitation's effects, review the existing empirical research on the topic, and explore in detail the links between what is known about incapacitation and the proper construction of criminal justice policy.