When Brute Force Fails

When Brute Force Fails PDF Author: Mark A. R. Kleiman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400831261
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Cost-effective methods for improving crime control in America 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.

When Brute Force Fails

When Brute Force Fails PDF Author: Mark A. R. Kleiman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400831261
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cost-effective methods for improving crime control in America 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.

Creating Born Criminals

Creating Born Criminals PDF Author: Nicole Hahn Rafter
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252067419
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
But Creating Born Criminals is much more than a look at the past. It is an exploration of the role of biological explanation as a form of discourse and of its impact upon society. While The Bell Curve and other recent books have stopped short of making eugenic recommendations, their contentions point toward eugenic conclusions, and people familiar with the history of eugenics can hear in them its echoes. Rafter demonstrates that we need to know how eugenic reasoning worked in the past and that we must recognize the dangers posed by the dominance of a theory that interprets social problems in biological terms and difference as biological inferiority.

Marijuana

Marijuana PDF Author: Mark Kleiman
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
A timely, tightly reasoned, thought-provoking examination of ways to select policies for the enforcement of federal marijuana drug laws. Choice Mark Kleiman has written a thorough . . . analysis of federal law enforcement policy options regarding marijuana. The genesis of this work began when he worked as a policy analyst with the U.S. Department of Justice. . . . Kleiman presents a number of major arguments against increased federal enforcement of laws prohibiting marijuana, including that it would: (1) increase the use of other drugs such as PCP and alcohol, (2) increase drug dealing and theft among adolescent users, and (3) increase the involvement of organized crime in the illicit distribution and sale of marijuana due to the attraction of greater profits. Regarding this last item, he argues that as enforcement efforts increase it gives people with a propensity for using violence and corruption a competitive advantage in the marijuana trade. Because Kleiman argues for a severe curtailment of federal law enforcement efforts against marijuana, it will stimulate the debate about the role of federal law with regard to marijuana. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice How, and how vigorously, should U.S. federal law enforcement agencies enforce the laws against dealing in marijuana? This book assesses alternative ways of enforcing marijuana laws at the federal level. Marijuana grew out of work begun by Kleiman in 1981-1982 when, as a drug policy analyst for the Department of Justice, he was trying to calculate how an increase in enforcement resources would serve the twin goals of reducing drug abuse and limiting the power and wealth of large criminal organizations. This volume reproduces that analysis, using newer data, and compares results up to 1985-1986 with expectations. It is intended not to second-guess what was done, but to suggest how such choices ought to be made in the future. Kleiman divides his analysis into three parts. First, he identifies what is at stake in marijuana consumption and dealing, estimates the size of the problem, and discusses the criteria to be used in judging a policy recommendation. The second part is devoted to developing a theory of drug dealing and its response to varying levels of enforcement pressure. The remainder of the book applies that theory to the real world and discusses the policy options available now. Kleiman's conclusions are pessimistic about the ability of federal enforcement to influence marijuana consumption. His analysis supports both a reduction in federal marijuana enforcement efforts and a redirection towards the most violent dealing groups. As a study of a critical problem in contemporary American society and as a work of policy analysis, Marijuana will be challenging reading for political scientists, economists, policy analysts, and members of those agencies dealing with drug law enforcement. The serious general reader also will find it thought provoking.

American Homicide

American Homicide PDF Author: Randolph Roth
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674054547
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 672

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Book Description
In American Homicide, Randolph Roth charts changes in the character and incidence of homicide in the U.S. from colonial times to the present. Roth argues that the United States is distinctive in its level of violence among unrelated adults—friends, acquaintances, and strangers. America was extraordinarily homicidal in the mid-seventeenth century, but it became relatively non-homicidal by the mid-eighteenth century, even in the slave South; and by the early nineteenth century, rates in the North and the mountain South were extremely low. But the homicide rate rose substantially among unrelated adults in the slave South after the American Revolution; and it skyrocketed across the United States from the late 1840s through the mid-1870s, while rates in most other Western nations held steady or fell. That surge—and all subsequent increases in the homicide rate—correlated closely with four distinct phenomena: political instability; a loss of government legitimacy; a loss of fellow-feeling among members of society caused by racial, religious, or political antagonism; and a loss of faith in the social hierarchy. Those four factors, Roth argues, best explain why homicide rates have gone up and down in the United States and in other Western nations over the past four centuries, and why the United States is today the most homicidal affluent nation.

When Gravity Fails

When Gravity Fails PDF Author: George Effinger
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0575124873
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
When Gravity Fails, the first Marid novel, is set in a high-tech near-future featuring a divided USA and USSR, a world with mind-or mood-altering drugs for any purpose; brains enhanced by electronic hardware, with plug-in memory additions and modules offering the wearer new personalities (James Bond, celebrities); bodies shaped to perfection by surgery. Marid Audran, an unmodified and fairly honest street-survivor, lives in a decadent Arab ghetto, the Budayeen, and, against his best instincts, becomes involved in a series of inexplicable murders. Some seem like routine assassinations, carried out with an old-fashioned handgun by a man wearing a plug-in James Bond persona; others, involving whores, feature prolonged torture and horrible mutilations. The problem comes to the attention of Budayeen godfather Friedlander Bey, who makes Audran an offer he can't refuse. Audran submits to electronic brain enhancement in order to track down and deal with the killer or killers.

Coercion, Survival, and War

Coercion, Survival, and War PDF Author: Phil Haun
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080479507X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
In asymmetric interstate conflicts, great powers have the capability to coerce weak states by threatening their survival—but not vice versa. It is therefore the great power that decides whether to escalate a conflict into a crisis by adopting a coercive strategy. In practice, however, the coercive strategies of the U.S. have frequently failed. In Coercion, Survival and War Phil Haun chronicles 30 asymmetric interstate crises involving the US from 1918 to 2003. The U.S. chose coercive strategies in 23 of these cases, but coercion failed half of the time: most often because the more powerful U.S. made demands that threatened the very survival of the weak state, causing it to resist as long as it had the means to do so. It is an unfortunate paradox Haun notes that, where the U.S. may prefer brute force to coercion, these power asymmetries may well lead it to first attempt coercive strategies that are expected to fail in order to justify the war it desires. He concludes that, when coercion is preferred to brute force there are clear limits as to what can be demanded. In such cases, he suggests, U.S. policymakers can improve the chances of success by matching appropriate threats to demands, by including other great powers in the coercive process, and by reducing a weak state leader's reputational costs by giving him or her face-saving options.

No, They Can't

No, They Can't PDF Author: John Stossel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451640943
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"New York Times" bestselling journalist John Stossel shows how the expansion of government control is destructive for American society.

Governing Access to Essential Resources

Governing Access to Essential Resources PDF Author: Katharina Pistor
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540760
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Essential resources do more than satisfy people's needs. They ensure a dignified existence. Since the competition for essential resources, particularly fresh water and arable land, is increasing and standard legal institutions, such as property rights and national border controls, are strangling access to resources for some while delivering prosperity to others, many are searching for ways to ensure their fair distribution. This book argues that the division of essential resources ought to be governed by a combination of Voice and Reflexivity. Voice is the ability of social groups to choose the rules by which they are governed. Reflexivity is the opportunity to question one's own preferences in light of competing claims and to accommodate them in a collective learning process. Having investigated the allocation of essential resources in places as varied as Cambodia, China, India, Kenya, Laos, Morocco, Nepal, the arid American West, and peri-urban areas in West Africa, the contributors to this volume largely concur with the viability of this policy and normative framework. Drawing on their expertise in law, environmental studies, anthropology, history, political science, and economics, they weigh the potential of Voice and Reflexivity against such alternatives as pricing mechanisms, property rights, common resource management, political might, or brute force.

In the Name of Justice

In the Name of Justice PDF Author: Timothy Lynch
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 193399522X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Judges and legal scholars explore the state of criminal law today and offer examinations of key issues, including suicide terrorism, drug legalization, and the reach of federal criminal liability. From publisher description.

When Prophecy Fails

When Prophecy Fails PDF Author: Leon Festinger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1625589778
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The study reported in this volume grew out of some theoretical work, one phase of which bore specifically on the behavior of individuals in social movements that made specific (and unfulfilled) prophecies. We had been forced to depend chiefly on historical records to judge the adequacy of our theoretical ideas until we by chance discovered the social movement that we report in this book. At the time we learned of it, the movement was in mid-career but the prophecy about which it was centered had not yet been disconfirmed. We were understandably eager to undertake a study that could test our theoretical ideas under natural conditions. That we were able to do this study was in great measure due to the support obtained through the Laboratory for Research in Social Relations of the University of Minnesota. This study is a project of the Laboratory and was carried out while we were all members of its staff. We should also like to acknowledge the help we received through a grant-in-aid from the Ford Foundation to one of the authors, a grant that made preliminary exploration of the field situation possible.