Michael Tonry is an international sentencing expert, but this book goes well beyond a focus on punishment for crime. Tonry explores crime rates by race over many years and types of crimes, then delves into a short history of the war on drugs. Unlike other authors, Tonry weighs and explains the ethics and morality of the War on Drugs because of the lopsided effects it has on minority communities. He does spend a couple of chapters on the philosophy of criminal responsibility, which benefits the reader who has knowledge of basic principles of criminal law. This book is an overlooked classic which resonates over time and space (the situation in Mexico; immigration crackdowns).

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