This challenged the conventional wisdom that prison and probation define the high and low extremes along a continuum of criminal sanctions. Results also show that female inmates were more amenable to alternative sanctions than were men. The survey found that some alternatives were rated as more punitive than imprisonment because they had a high rate of program failure and inmates would be returned to prison after having invested significant time and effort in the program; many inmates cited abusive treatment by program administrators and officers that significantly increased the likelihood that inmates would have failed the program and been returned to prison. Many inmates with significant experience in the criminal justice system viewed prison time as less onerous than many alternative sanctions and would rather have done more time with no strings attached. These inmates rated prison as significantly less punitive than many alternative sanctions. These survey results should assist criminal justice professionals and practitioners in devising reliable punishment equivalencies and a valid continuum of criminal sanctions. This paper concludes with a critique of problems associated with research that examines offenders' perceptions of the severity of various sanctions. 7 tables and 17 references