Brandeis's Laboratories of Sentencing and Corrections: Making Better Use of Knowledge from the States

Abstract

State criminal justice systems have great opportunities to learn from the successes and failures of other states. Justice Brandeis famously called the states “laboratories” for innovation in law and policy. Yet researchers, policy makers, and law makers have done too little to exploit this unique American resource. This article highlights a number of issues in the field of sentencing and corrections that jump forward from a combined reading of all the articles published in this volume. The subjects are: (1) a suggestion for improvement on the current model for state-based research in criminal justice; (2) the pressing need to attend to policy issues at the “back end” of the sentencing chronology; (3) the growing use of risk assessment technology at various stages of the sentencing process; (4) the need to embrace less-than-perfect solutions; and (5) the need to develop new policy approaches to combat racial and ethnic disparities among those sentenced.