Paper in Part I focuses on the relationship between policy and politics, with reference to punitive preferences. At the heart of the problem are data that show little or no correlation between punitive policy making and crime rates. Equally confounding are criminological findings that indicate punitive policies are at best inadequate and at worst counter-productive. The diverse, and to some extent conflicting, explanations offered in this section further complicate the issue; however, taken together, the papers suggest that an adequate understanding of the lure of punishment will require looking beyond crime and criminology to politics, economics, and culture. Part II shifts to an analysis of the public attitudes widely thought to be driving punitive policy choices. The picture that emerges in Part II is of a divided and ambivalent public, whose punitive attitudes may be only tenuously linked to crime. Recent public opinion research shows increasingly punitive attitudes in the United States. These data strongly suggest that the public is at the very least complicit in the punitive policy binge of recent decades. Although it might seem that the public's thirst for punishment of criminals is behind the politics of law and order, the data presented in Part II portray a more complex picture of public attitudes and suggest that the politics of law and order is more of a two-way street, with political leaders and the public feeding off one another. Part III turns to the cultural forces and institutions that mediate among politics, policy, and public opinion. According to the emerging body of research presented in these papers, punishment is best understood as a socially constructed cultural truth that resonates with deeply felt needs. This cultural perspective is shared by all the readings, which are otherwise divided by different foci and competing interpretations. Name index