By  Thomas Ward Frampton

 Prison abolition, in the span of just a few short years, has established a foothold in elite criminal legal discourse. But the basic question of how abolitionists would address “the dangerous few” often receives superficial treatment; the problem constitutes a “spectral force haunting abolitionist thought . . . as soon as abolitionist discourses navigate towards the programmatic and enter the public arena.”1 This Essay offers two main contributions: it (1) maps the diverse ways in which prison abolitionists most frequently respond to the challenge of “the dangerous few,” highlighting strengths and infirmities of each stance, and (2) proposes alternative, hopefully more productive, responses that interrogate and probe the implicit premises (empirical, ideological, or moral) embedded in and animating questions concerning “the dangerous few.”

Harvard Law Review,  VOLUME 135 JUNE 2022 NUMBER 8

By Craig Russell

The United States has almost three times as many prisoners as it did just twenty-five years ago. Although the cost of keeping people in prison is rising, there are less expensive alternatives that may also be more effective at keeping people from returning to jail after they are released. Recent changes in the U.S. criminal code allow judges more freedom to give sentences other than prison.

Broomall, PA: Mason Crest, 2018. 82p.