Gordon Hawkins

"Getting tough on crime" has been one of the favorite rallying cries of American politicians in the last two decades, and "getting tough" on repeat offenders has been particularly popular. "Three strikes and you're out" laws, which effectively impose a 25-years-to-life sentence at the moment of a third felony conviction, have been passed in 26 states. California's version of the "three strikes" law, enacted in 1994, was broader and more severe than measures considered or passed in any other state. Punishment and Democracy is the first examination of the actual impact this law has had. Franklin Zimring, Sam Kamin, and Gordon Hawkins look at the origins of the law in California, compare it to other crackdown laws, and analyze the data collected on crime rates in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco in the year before and the two years after the law went into effect. They show that the "three strikes" law was a significant development in criminal justice policy making, not only at the state level, but also at the national level. They conclude with an examination of the trend toward populist initiatives driving penal policy. The importance of the subject and the stature of the authors make this book required reading for policy analysts, criminal justice scholars, elected officials, and indeed any American seeking to know more about "get-tough" criminal sentencing.

This book is the most comprehensive treatment of the politics and the impact of the 'get tough' criminal sentencing legislation in the US. It includes a major empirical study of the celebrated California 'three strikes' law, the law that imposed a 25-years to life imprisonment the moment of a third felony conviction. 'Three Strikes' is the single most important assault on criminal recidivists in the twentieth century. This book tells the story of how such a revolutionary shift in punishment policy became law, the impact of that legislation on criminal punishments and crime rates in California, and the broad implications of Three Strikes for the ways in which punishment policy is made in democratic governments.

This book presents a comprehensive examination of the drug control policy process in the United States. How are policy choices identified, debated and selected? How are the consequences of governmental policy measured and evaluated? How, if at all, do we learn from our mistakes. The first section deals with four different ways of understanding American drug policy: drug control as ideology, drugs as an issue of definition and measurement, an historical analysis of drug control, and finally, drug control as an occasion for debating the proper role of the criminal law. Zimring and Hawkins also discuss priority problems for drug control and provide a foundation for an improved policy process. They argue that protection of children and youth should shape policy toward illicit crime, with attention to the fact that youth protection objectives may limit the effectiveness of some drug controls.

This book presents a comprehensive examination of the drug control policy process in the United States. How are policy choices identified, debated and selected? How are the consequences of governmental policy measured and evaluated? How, if at all, do we learn from our mistakes. The first section deals with four different ways of understanding American drug policy: drug control as ideology, drugs as an issue of definition and measurement, an historical analysis of drug control, and finally, drug control as an occasion for debating the proper role of the criminal law. Zimring and Hawkins also discuss priority problems for drug control and provide a foundation for an improved policy process. They argue that protection of children and youth should shape policy toward illicit crime, with attention to the fact that youth protection objectives may limit the effectiveness of some drug controls.

Pornography in a Free Society deals with what has been called the 'civil war over smut'. It addresses an issue about which citizens of Western nations are sharply divided. Gordon Hawkins and Franklin Zimring attempt to look at the problem of pornography in a wider perspective than that of partisan political debate. To that end, they compare two American reports on pornography commissioned by Presidents Johnson and Reagan, the first published in 1970 and the latter in 1986, with the report of the British Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, which appeared during the years between the American reports. They discuss the radical feminist challenge to pornography and the question of pornography and children. Going on to consider likely future developments, the authors argue that the furore over pornography and the appointment of commissions are part of a 'ceremony of adjustment' to widespread availability of sexually explicit material and they predict less social concern about pornography as time passes.

The death penalty is not simply the most serious criminal punishment. It has been a singular social, legal, and moral problem in the Western world over the past two hundred years. Capital punishment is disappearing from every nation in the West except the United States. No political science of capital punishment in the United States has been attempted until this book. Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins offer a redefinition of the central political and legal issues and a re-examination of the whole subject in the light of the social, political, and moral conditions of the United States in the 1980s. Lawyers, criminologists, political scientists, and motivated general readers will find the profile of a United States pursuing an active execution policy in the 1980s and 1990s to be an original and compelling contribution to the discussion of the future of the death penalty. Zimring and Hawkins's prediction for future policy, while based on historical precedent, is in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom about the United States Supreme Court. This book was first published in 1986.