- Contents: Punishment policies and patterns in Western countries / Michael Tonry -- Three strikes and you're out--it's not cricket : colonization and resistance in Australian sentencing / Arie Freiberg -- The decline of English sentencing and other stories / Andrew Ashworth -- Sentencing and punishment in Finland : the decline of the repressive ideal / Tapio Lappi-Seppälä -- Sentencing and punishment in The Netherlands / Peter J. Tak -- Sentencing and punishment in Germany / Thomas Weigend -- The disassembly and reassembly of U.S. sentencing practices / Kevin R. Reitz -- Comparative perspectives on sentencing policy and research / Richard S. Frase -- Post-adjudication dispositions in comparative perspective / Hans-Jörg Albrecht -- International standards for sentencing and punishment / Leena Kurki -- International controls on sentencing and punishment / Rod Morgan -- The project of sentencing reform / Andrew von Hirsch. This collection of original essays surveys the evolution of sentencing policies and practices in Western countries over the past twenty-five years. The volume consists of approximately ten essays. Six consider sentencing policy strategies and practices in major western countries, including Australia, England/Wales, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. Each is written by a recognized expert from that part of the world. The remaining essays consider developments and subjects that cross national boundaries. Just a few of the subjects touched upon include plea-bargaining, community service and electronic monitoring, standards of use of incarceration, and legal perspectives on sentencing policy developments in western countries. The goal of the book is to provide a range of scholars and students better cross-national knowledge than currently exists of how various countries' sentencing laws and practices differ, when and why they have changed over time, and with what effects. Increasingly, countries are likely to look across nation boundaries for boundaries for solutions to pressing sentencing-policy problems. There exists, however, no scholarly literature on the subject.