When Brute Force Fails

How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-691-14864-9
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 442 g

Since the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults--a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. When Brute Force Fails explains how we got into the current trap and how we can get out of it: to cut both crime and the prison population in half within a decade. Mark Kleiman demonstrates that simply locking up more people for lengthier terms is no longer a workable crime-control strategy. But, says Kleiman, there has been a revolution--largely unnoticed by the press--in controlling crime by means other than brute-force incarceration: substituting swiftness and certainty of punishment for randomized severity, concentrating enforcement resources rather than dispersing them, communicating specific threats of punishment to specific offenders, and enforcing probation and parole conditions to make community corrections a genuine alternative to incarceration. As Kleiman shows, "zero tolerance" is nonsense: there are always more offenses than there is punishment capacity. But, it is possible--and essential--to create focused zero tolerance, by clearly specifying the rules and then delivering the promised sanctions every time the rules are broken. Brute-force crime control has been a costly mistake, both socially and financially. Now that we know how to do better, it would be immoral not to put that knowledge to work.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kleiman, Mark A. R.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Innen-, Bildungs- und Bevölkerungspolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie
• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Kriminologie, Strafverfolgung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction e How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment 1

Chapter 1: The Trap 8

Chapter 2: Thinking about Crime Control 16

Chapter 3: Hope 34

Chapter 4: Tipping, Dynamic Concentration, and the Logic of Deterrence 49

Chapter 5: Crime Despite Punishment 68

Chapter 6: Designing Enforcement Strategies 86

Chapter 7: Crime Control without Punishment 117

Chapter 8: Guns and Gun Control 136

Chapter 9: Drug Policy for Crime Control 149

Chapter 10: What Could Go Wrong? 164

Chapter 11: An Agenda for Crime Control 175

Notes 191

Bibliography 207

Index 227

Über Autor(innen)

Kleiman, Mark A. R.
Mark A. R. Kleiman is professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of "Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results" and "Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control".