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Wisconsin Sentencing in the Tough-on-Crime Era
How Judges Retained Power and Why Mass Incarceration Happened Anyway
Michael O’Hear
“Eye-opening.”
—Shepherd Express
The dramatic increase in U.S. prison populations since the 1970s is often blamed on the mandatory sentencing required by “three strikes” laws and other punitive crime bills. Michael O’Hear demonstrates how political
dynamics can lead judges to impose harsher sentences. His meticulous analysis
of crime and incarceration in the state—one where judges have considerable
discretion in sentencing—shows that the prison population has ballooned
anyway, increasing nearly tenfold over forty years. Through extensive archival
research, original public-opinion polling, and interviews with dozens of key
policy makers, he draws lessons from the Wisconsin system that apply to the
United States as a whole.
Michael O’Hear is a professor of law at Marquette University. He is an editor of the journal Federal Sentencing Reporter and has published many articles on sentencing law, criminal procedure, and public opinion about the criminal justice system.
Praise
“Serious students of modern sentencing reforms—as well as everyone eager to understand the roots of, and potential responses to, modern mass incarceration—must have this book on their reading list. O’Hear thoroughly canvasses the dynamic story of Wisconsin’s uniquely important sentencing reform history.”
—Douglas Berman, author of the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog
“Fascinating political and social history. O’Hear puts national criminal justice trends into a single-state frame, providing much sharper insights than often come from trying to look at the entirety of this very big country. This is first-rate work.”
—Frank O. Bowman III, University of Missouri School of Law
“Debunks myths surrounding mass incarceration.”
—Isthmus
“Highly recommended to judges, academics, students, or anyone interested in learning more about effective sentencing reform.”
—New York Journal of Books
“O’Hear’s carefully qualified and explicitly contingent hypothesis enjoys robust support in highly qualified scholarship and in empirical data.”
—Wisconsin Lawyer
Additional Resources
Listen to interviews with Michael O’Hear about this book:
WisPolitics.com podcast http://madisontalkers.com/podcast/jeff-mayers-for-wis-politics-book-club-1-17-17/
Wisconsin Public Radio interview http://www.wpr.org/listen/1046251
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Larger images
New in Paperback!
January 2021
LC: 2016013661 HV
288 pp. 6 × 9
18 figures, 8 tables
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