When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment

"This is very good. It's not quite as good as Einstein predicting light bending around the sun, . . . but it's a step in the right direction."--James Q. Wilson

"Absolutely buy this book. Dedicate some time to it. . . . This is the most important social science book I've read in many years."--Reihan Salam, New America Foundation

"For two decades, Mark Kleiman has tried to rescue community corrections from its own incompetence as well as from its critics. In When Brute Force Fails he extends his reach to develop a more sensible system of criminal justice. The book is imaginative, thorough, and readable. It will make a difference in public policy."--Peter Reuter, University of Maryland

"Mark Kleiman draws on a mixture of common sense, rationality, analysis, and individual case studies to develop clear policy recommendations about how to reduce crime while cutting costs. Policymakers, constrained by increasingly tight budgets, would be well advised to give serious consideration to his approaches and proposals."--Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie Mellon University

"Ideas that make a real difference don't come along often. Mark Kleiman's got a big one here."--Robert H. Frank, Cornell University

"Crime is costly. Punishment is costly. Mark Kleiman shows how, by being clever rather than vindictive, we can have much less of both than anyone thought possible. This book is the order of battle for a historic victory of intelligence over evil."--Michael O'Hare, University of California, Berkeley

"This is a terrific book on crime control, one that will inform experts and laypeople alike. Kleiman speaks about crime control with clarity and informed common sense."--Jim Leitzel, University of Chicago

"This book is destined to be a classic. There have been few new ideas for how to implement deterrence and this book is a fresh start at tackling the problem. It reads beautifully and is one of the most innovative and original contributions to the crime-control debate in a decade or more."--Robert J. MacCoun, University of California, Berkeley

Relying only on "brute force" approaches to crime control in the United States, argues Kleiman (public policy, U. of California at Los Angeles), has simply led to a massive incarceration problem being added to the crime problem. He calls for rethinking crime control as an ordinary domestic-policy problem that would focus on consequences and would thus begin with asking how to limit the damage of crime with as little cost as possible in money spent and suffering inflicted. Such an approach would favor swift and certain punishment over severity and would lead to the rejection of so-called "zero tolerance" policies, which cause sporadic and delayed punishments in the futile effort to control everything and everyone. Concentration of resources and the direct communication of deterrent threats to likely offenders would bolster swiftness and certainty and help "tip" high-violation situations towards low-violation equilibriums. This approach should be applied to the general criminal justice systems well as community corrections systems of parole and probation. After laying out this argument, he looks at the strategies his approach would indicate, particularly in the areas of gun control and drug policy. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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.

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".

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