The ‘no man’s land’ of intermediate legal sanctions

Abstract

This is an exercise in convict criminology, taking its orientation from the literature on legal narrative and storytelling. It addresses a current and long-standing area of criminal justice policy, the use of intermediate sanctions in corrections, doing so from a participant’s perspective. Prison is described as being part of the crime problem, in part because it brings lasting harm to those within its persistent embrace. Intermediate penal sanctions, touted as a true corrections alternative, are shown to have significant shortcomings. Convict criminology and legal storytelling are presented as encouraging restorative responses to instances of harm occurring through both crime and crime control.