Decisions to imprison

This volume presents an analysis of sentencing decision-making. The author uses quantitative and qualitative methods from studies carried out in Denmark to address the formal and informal norms and ideologies that are used to generate decisions to imprison. Focusing on the operations of the courtroom participants, the work investigates how court decision-making is organized to allow the sentencing decision making to be open to more than its formal legal framework, while at the same time keeping the sentencing within the boundaries of law and legal validity. The author uses the theory of law's operational closure, developed by Niklas Luhmann. The theory provides an advantageous point of departure to capture the close and subtle interactions between law's need for validity and for contextual openness in every legal operation - including court decision-making.

This book is a significant contribution to the international literature on sentencing. Not only does it break new ground as an empirical study of sentencing behaviour in Scandinavia, but it also draws upon Luhmann's theoretical perspectives and places its insights within the framework of Anglo-American sentencing scholarship. The book contains a close analysis of the construction of sentencing decisions and a nuanced criminological assessment of the role of informal but nevertheless significant court practices an assessment that carries through to the implications for offenders in lower socio-economic groups. I commend this book to all those interested in the theory and practice of sentencing.