Jeffrey Abramson

Creative sentencing is an effort to make punishment more meaningful by designing a sentence to rehabilitate an offender and serve the community. However, some creative sentences have been controversial. For instance, a mother convicted of child abuse agreed to be implanted with a Nor- plant contraceptive as part of her probation. In California, parole has been granted to convicted child molesters who agreed to undergo “chemical castration” to suppress their libidos. In the following viewpoint, Jeffrey Abramson asserts that creative sentencing may not provide effective alternatives to prison. He contends that it expresses the rage and frustration a community feels toward an offender, which is a “haphazard” approach to punishment. Therefore, he claims that creative sentences often have little or no rehabilitative value. Abramson is a professor of politics and...