Reducing Prison Crowding and Nonprison Penalties

Abstract

This article highlights two types of ameliorative responses to the problem of prison and jail crowding: those responses aimed at diverting some prison-bound offenders to alternative programs and those designed to regulate prison population levels more directly. It argues that both types of strategies raise practical and philosophical issues that can be resolved satisfactorily only through a comprehensive reassessment of the full spectrum of criminal penalties and how they are used.