Individual chapters detail the elements of the criminal justice system, the goals of punishment, the sentencing process, and capital punishment. Additional chapters detail policies and practices related to jails, the history of incarceration, mental health and the law of corrections, contemporary prisons, prison management problems, private prisons, inmate programs, female inmates, and prisoners’ rights. Further chapters focus on community corrections and cover probation, parole, community service, restitution, halfway houses, work-release centers, and other community-based programs. Other chapters analyze shock incarceration programs and intermediate sanctions, including home detention, intensive supervision without electronic monitoring, and fines and other monetary penalties. The final chapter examines the status of corrections today and forecasts its likely future, focusing on sentencing law and reforms, correctional treatment programs, community-based corrections, inmates with special needs, prison overcrowding, super-max prisons, and the prison-industrial complex. Photographs, tables, lists of central concepts for each chapter, chapter discussion questions, endnotes, appended glossary and table of cases, name index, and subject index