A new approach to sentencing Not Just Deserts inaugurates a radical shift in the research agenda of criminology. The authors attack currently fashionable retributivist theories of punishment, arguing that the criminal justice system is so integrated that sentencing policy has to be considered in the system-wide context. They offer a comprehensive theory of criminal justice which draws on a philosophical view of the good and the right, and which points the way to practical intervention in the real world of incremental reform. They put the case for a criminal justice system which maximizes freedom in the old republican sense of the term, and which they call `dominion'.

Well-written, thought-provoking and tightly argued book ... The authors of this lively book, by redirecting us back to the question of the extent to which the criminal justice system does, in fact, serve a useful purpose, have set an agenda which will undoubtedly provoke much debate. * Roger Hood, Times Literary Supplement *
Ambitious and wide-ranging book ... It would make a stimulating text for use in undergraduate classes. * Mind *
This deep, important book explicating a normative theory of criminal justice ... effectively challenges a current vogue among both scholars and practitioners--the idea of just deserts; and it does a good job of substituting a new approach which the authors call "republican" theory. * Law and Politics Book Review *