Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice, 1950-1990 [Hardcover]

Samuel Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0195078209 | ISBN-13: 978-0195078206

It is a truism that the administration of criminal justice consists of a series of discretionary decisions by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials. Taming the System is a history of the forty-year effort to control the discretion. It examines the discretion problem from the initial "discovery" of the phenomenon by the American Bar Foundation in the 1950s through to the most recent evaluation research on reform measures. Of enormous value to scholars, reformers, and criminal justice professionals, this book approaches the discretion problem through a detailed examination of four decision points: policing, bail setting, plea bargaining, and sentencing. In a field which largely produces short-ranged "evaluation research," this study, in taking a wider approach, distinguishes between the role of administrative bodies (the police) and evaluates the longer-term trends and the successful reforms in criminal justice history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Displays a formidable command of the relevant literature....A concise and balanced overview of a critical dimension in the operation of the criminal justice system."--Choice

"[A] comprehensive, very well-organized, and informative account..."--Contemporary Sociology

"With such titles as Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice (1980) and In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990), Samuel Walker secured his status as a major voice in criminal justice history. Taming the System buttresses his reputation by demonstrating once again his considerable strengths: mastery of the topic, clear and effective prose, well-crafted arguments, [and] sound conclusions."--The Journal of American History

About the Author

Samuel Walker is at University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 20, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195078209
• ISBN-13: 978-0195078206
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #904,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Samuel Walker is Isaacson Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, where he has taught for over 30 years. He is the author of 13 books on policing, criminal justice history and policy, and civil liberties. Current research involves police accountability, focusing primarily on citizen oversight of the police and police Early Warning (EW) systems. Professor Walker currently serves on the Panel on Policing of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Useful for some things, but heavy bias and exagerated claims decreases quality, November 9, 2011

By 

G. Gawne "daemonblade" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice, 1950-1990 (Hardcover)

Walker's text is largely an account of the history of major discretionary control measures in the latter half of the 20th century. It's historical account is useful as a resource, and contains a good amount of detail while not loosing site of a larger picture.

There are two main problems: one, while masquerading as a fair and balanced view, it is unapologetically biased, and two, he has a number of unsupported assumptions that cause him to push toward exaggerated claims regarding the control of discretion.

Walker is a major proponent of the Due Process school of thought, and he rarely lets an opportunity to assert his views pass. This would not be a problem if it was made plain what is a bias and opinion, and what is historical fact, but he mixes the two quite heavily, all while the text treats all the material as equally empirical. For those unfamiliar with contemporary criminal justice, there are two major models of thought: due process and crime control. Due process is very concerned with protecting the rights of the accused and limiting discretion of the players, while crime control favors controlling crime even at the reduction of control measures on agents of the Justice System. They tend to line up ideologically with liberalism and conservatism in the political sphere, though not always. However, just like liberlism and conservatism, both extreme views have a mixture of negative and positive aspect, and the optimum course is most often achieved by finding the 'golden mean'.

The biggest issue here is that Walker automatically assumes that discretion in the system is a negative thing, and must inherently be controlled for there to be such a thing as justice. He paints the implementation of discretionary controls as a necessary, long overdue process that has been slowly making gains in it's efforts to do away with the dastardly status quo of wild, untamed discretion, where injustice thrives as everyone exercises discretion. He goes so far as to imply that differing perspectives, particularly crime control perspectives, are in opposition to justice.

There are some major problems with this. For one, in his zeal to control discretion, he loses sight of the benefits that discretion can bring. Sociological research from a variety of sources is increasingly shows that heavily controlling a person's discretion actually results in poorer performance of tasks involving an cognitive or creative skills. (If you're wondering where I'm getting this from, as a starting point, look at the Youtube video of Dan Pink's TED talks about motivation.) Granted, this book is a bit dated (being almost 20 years old now), so it's somewhat understandable that it's not up on the latest research, but the core of this perspective is one advocated by business and management gurus for some time now. Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard, and Warren Bennis have all argued similar points. Rather than control discretion, the concern should be to guide decision making to the best course of action while still giving CJ actors the autonomy to make decisions. But, he focuses only on controlling discretion (lest it be abused, though 'abuse of discretion' and 'discretion' are conflated throughout the text), and loses sight of this.

Additionally, the author makes exaggerated claims that are unsupported by his evidence, or unsupportable period. For example, in his conclusion he states the following: "A final point is that controls which limit the discretion of criminal justice officials in the interest of promoting justice do not endanger the community." (pg 151) In this text, he provides perhaps three or four examples of situations where such controls were used that evidence suggests did not have a major negative effect on the safety of the community. Such a small body of evidence is little justification for such a sweeping statement. The fact of the matter is, regardless of the intent of the control implementers, there could easily be discretionary controls places on CJ officials that do endanger a community. That potential does exist, regardless of past practice, which is why such care and effort needs to be taken int he formulation of such rules. To state otherwise is irresponsible in the extreme, as it can lead to people exercising less regard for the potential consequences of the measures they wish to enact.And this is just one example.

But, ultimately, these are my frustrations with the text, and, though I'd think anyone would be annoyed by an author presenting a biased view as an empirical one, I'd imagine there are many people who'll be fans of this book. It's by no means the worse case of unacknowledged bias and exaggerated conclusions, but this is supposed to be a fair and balanced, academically oriented text, which is why I feel it should be held to a higher standard of specificity and evenness.

I'll venture that if you're strongly liberal/due process oriented, you'll probably eat it up, whereas if you're conservative/a fan of crime control, the you'll find it very frustrating.