Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury. By Albert W. Dzur. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 221 pp. $55.00 cloth.

Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury. By Albert W. Dzur. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 221 pp. $55.00 cloth.I am not a political theorist. In one reading of Albert Dzur's won- derful book, Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury,my "lay" perspective is beneficial. As I deliver my verdict on this book, which offers up jury sentencing and some lay restorative justice procedures as solutions to our current dysfunctional criminal justice system, I am perhaps less encumbered by some negative characteristics, as catalogued by Dzur, of experts: insularity and ignorance of how finely honed theories and long-standing practices are perceived or experienced by those affected; a sense of "over- confidence about their infallibility" (p. 155); and, at least in the criminal justice sphere (if maybe not among political theorists?), a certain harshness. Thus, although I cannot ultimately provide a reliable report on Dzur's handling of the building blocks of his arguments-the assertions of Tocqueville, Mill, Montesquieu, Anthony Duff, and Nils Christie, to name a few-perhaps I still bring a useful "outsider's" perspective.If faith in the contributions of non-experts seems odd to you, Professor Dzur will very ably explain why, counterintuitively, the United States' much-vilified jury system, site of the truly empow- ered layperson, is one answer to the problem that ails us. And we are indeed ill. As Dzur writes, the United States is the "world champion" of incarceration; "one out of a hundred American adults is in prison or jail, 100,000 are in the juvenile justice system, and many more are economically dependent on the penal state" (p. 21). An important contribution of this book is a clear-eyed engagement with those in criminological circles who blame this on America's democratic impulses and so-called "penal populism," with California's "Three Strikes" rule, voted on through the state's proposition system, as Exhibit A. Such critics call for greater use of expert panels to set and implement sentencing and prison prac- tices, a sort of "Federal Reserve Board" for penology (p. 27), or, looking to other cultures, an increased professionalism among elites who influence sentencing, be they in criminal justice admin- istration, law, or the media. Dzur aptly notes how out of step such proposals are with a core feature of American political life: a deep suspicion of elites, a suspicion, he argues, that fueled "Three Strikes" efforts as voters struggled to find ways to rein in repeat offenders, nonetheless imposing costs voters did not appreciate.To bring some legitimacy, and, he hopes, sanity, to sentencing, Dzur looks to participatory and non-elite democratic institutions we already have. Juries-together with community-based sentencing groups, such as Vermont's Reparative Probation program-foster what Dzur calls "thick populism," groups that, among other things, see themselves as working in collaboration with experts ( judges), who promote heterogeneity of participation, and who value and generate a community-minded spirit of working together, thereby learning the skills of democracy-all of this is in contrast to the "thin populism" he sees in narrow political mobilization efforts, like the Three Strikes efforts. This collaborative model is central to his view of the jury, and he devotes a full chapter to critiquing theorists such as Tocqueville and Mill who saw the jury as usefully symbolic for legitimacy purposes and who emphasized its benefits to jurors, a la the "schoolhouse" of service. For Dzur- and empirical accounts such as Kalven and Zeisel's (1966) would support him-legitimacy and civic skills may accrue, but juries also contribute something unique and important to outcomes. In Dzur's view, juries give representation, and voice, to community members who are better able than judges to grasp the individu- ating factors, and community sense, of each case. …