Based on over thirty years of research of government sentencing policy and work within the criminal justice system, David Fraser demonstrates that Britain's increased reliance on alternatives to imprisonment has allowed violent crime to flourish. The number of life-threatening attacks has increased rapidly over the last forty years but justice officials have masked this development within a blizzard of deceptive statistics.

Anti-prison groups tell the public that violent offenders can be managed in the community under supervision and that prison makes offenders worse. Contrary to this misleading propaganda, the evidence presented here informs us that criminals under probation supervision as an alternative to imprisonment commit hundreds of the most serious crimes every year, while the government's figures - which are kept away from the public eye - make it clear that long prison sentences are our best protection against violent crime.

Licence to Kill demonstrates that the death penalty was an effective deterrent to homicide but does not argue for its reintroduction. Instead, by acknowledging its effectiveness, David Fraser argues the case for a re-vamped sentencing system that is as effective as was the fear of the hangman's noose. By providing readers with an alternative perspective, he invites them to consider the idea of a new criminal sentencing framework.