From a Tight Place: Crime, Punishment, and American Liberalism

Getting away with Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System. By Susan Estrich. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp.

176. It is surely one of the ironies of President Bill Clinton's remarkable career that he will be remembered both as the leader who helped save the Democratic Party from a near fatal lack of resolve on fighting crime and as a chief victim of a governmental culture obsessed with detecting and punishing crime. Clinton's saga is only one part of the story of how a great fear of crime and a powerful passion to punish have reshaped the dynamics of American elections and, ultimately, the administration of government at the federal and state levels during the last thirty years.