About this Book

A retrospective account of the research done in the 1950s by the American Bar Foundation which conducted a pilot survey of the processing of offenders from arrest to prison--to observe what actually happened at each decision point, instead of assuming that doctrinal legal analyses were sufficient. Many of the chief participants in the Survey of Criminal Justice write here about the consequences of the earlier research for subsequent scholarship, teaching, and policy, and reflect on the problem of discretion in criminal justice.