Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #525138 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780691142081
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Review
One way to make apprehension and punishment more likely is to spend substantially more money on law enforcement. In a time of chronic budget shortfalls, however, that won't happen. But Mr. Kleiman suggests that smarter enforcement strategies can make existing budgets go further. The important step, he says, is to view enforcement as a dynamic game in which strategically chosen deterrence policies become self-reinforcing. . . . It is an ingenious idea that borrows from game theory and the economics of signaling behavior. . . . Revolutionary.
(Robert H. Frank New York Times )

Mass incarceration was a successful public-policy tourniquet. But now that we've stopped the bleeding, it can't be a permanent solution. . . . [I]t requires a more sophisticated crime-fighting approach--an emphasis, for instance, on making sentences swifter and more certain, even as we make them shorter; a system of performance metrics for prisons and their administrators; a more stringent approach to probation and parole. (When Brute Force Fails, by the U.C.L.A. law professor Mark Kleiman, is the best handbook for would-be reformers.)
(Ross Douthat New York Times )

'Big cases make bad laws' is a criminological axiom, and one with which Mark A. R. Kleiman agrees, in When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment. Kleiman blames big cases and bad laws for another distinctive feature of American life: 2.3 million people are currently behind bars in the United States. . . . At what point, Kleiman wonders, will incarceration be a greater social ill than crime? He proposes, for lesser offenders, punishments that are swift and certain but not necessarily severe: a night in jail, instead of a warning, for missing a meeting with a parole officer, say, and ten nights the next time.
(Jill Lepore New Yorker )

From Kennedy and Kleiman to Alm and Meares, the judges and scholars developing new deterrence strategies are changing the way we think about parole, probation, gang violence and drug markets.
(Jeffrey Rosen New York Times Magazine )

In his recent book, When Brute Force Fails, UCLA's Kleiman argues that new strategies for targeting repeat offenders--including reforms to make probation an effective sanction rather than a feckless joke--could cut crime and reduce prison populations simultaneously. Safer communities, in turn, might produce more hopeful and well-disciplined kids.
(David Von Drehle TIME Magazine )

Mark Kleiman's new book, When Brute Force Fails, draws on the bedrock of economic logic--rational actors using incentives to make optimal decisions--to arrive at a sweeping overhaul of how we deter, punish and sentence. . . . Kleiman says we can have more effective deterrence by becoming more efficient in the use of resources to control crime. . . . Kleiman's theory of 'dynamic concentration' is the best example of economic logic used cautiously and innovatively to address a social problem. . . . If you want a no-nonsense guide to using incentives to build a better mousetrap, this is the book for you.
(Sudhir Venkatesh Forbes )

Absolutely buy this book and dedicate some time to it. . . . This is the most important social science book I've read in many years.
(Reihan Salam Bloggingheads.tv )

Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California (Los Angeles), contend[s] that for violent as well as nonviolent offenders, long prison terms--which most potential criminals don't expect to incur--do less to deter crime than would swifter and surer imposition of less onerous penalties. Even probation, Kleiman writes, can be a real deterrent if accompanied by tough conditions and oversight. In his recent book, When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, Kleiman argues that the correct reforms would lead to 'half as much crime and half as many people behind bars 10 years from now.'
(Stuart Taylor Jr. National Journal )

Kleiman's recommendations appear to work. If they do, every community should be considering how to apply them. The current ways, the tough-sounding sentences, the random zero-tolerance, the throw 'em-in-jail-and-throw-away-the-key approach, feels right. But maybe it's wrong.
(Royal Oak Daily Tribune )

[Kleiman] brings to his analysis a formidable array of statistics and case studies, which, fortunately for the reader, he uses to illuminate rather than overpower. . . . Having dissected the problem as he sees it, Kleiman offers in his final chapter a series of tips he believes will reduce both crime and the cost of correction and punishment. It is a trenchantly-stated starting point for reformers and fiscal conservatives alike.
(Edward Morris ForeWord Magazine )

Offenders are not 'rational actors' in the normal sense, explains UCLA professor Mark A.R. Kleiman in his book, When Brute Force Fails. Their cost-benefit calculations are skewed toward the immediate future, which means a delayed punishment won't feel tied to the offense. . . . Even [James Q.] Wilson, the godfather of 'tough on crime,' has endorsed Kleiman's book. 'This is very good. It's not quite as good as Einstein predicting the shift of light behind Mars . . . but it's a step in the right direction,' Wilson said while appearing alongside Kleiman on a panel at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in October.
(Adam Serwer American Prospect )

One of the most admired liberal policy books of the season, Mark Kleiman's When Brute Force Fails, argues for reconsidering current law enforcement policy.
(David Frum The Week )

Review
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 )

About the Author
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".

Customer Reviews

An Escape From the Routine
Mark Kleiman has had an interesting career which included public service, academia and stints in the private sector. He notes at his acknowledgements that, "I realize that I have been preparing to write this book for most of a lifetime..." Kleiman then weighs in on controversies as varied as gun control to drug policy. In an eleven chapters he weaves an interesting argument that produces a tapestry that includes both broad generalizations as well as a healthy number of extremely specific recommendations for action across society as a whole.

As one would expect, crime control - a perennial popular public policy issue - has some well entrenched positions that are assumed by advocates on reflex. Kleiman argues at the introduction that:

"The first step in getting away from brute force is to want to get away from brute force: to care more about reducing crime than about punishing criminals, and to be willing to choose safety over vengeance when the two are in tension."

When grappling with crime control, he advocates additional considerations be factored into a real solution -concentration of resources and direct communication of deterrent threats to likely offenders.

Simply this book is guaranteed to upset almost every reader's comfort level at some point, to prove this I refer you to his sixteen page final chapter innocuously labeled as "An Agenda for Crime Control". Kleiman ultimately concludes that "Liberals will have to swallow the idea that improved coercion is as necessary as improved conditions. Conservatives will have to swallow the ideas that punishment is a cost and not a benefit and that the measure of the efficacy of a threat is how often it does not need to be carried out, plus the fact that providing services to actual and potential offenders can in some circumstances control crime more effectively and more cost-effectively than law enforcement."

This book is a worthwhile investment of your time.

Extremely interesting, provocative, and informative
"When Brute Force Fails" is interesting, relevant, and informative on many levels. Mark Kleiman has a unique gift to explain the complex historical, economic and sociological aspects of crime research in a straightforward and concise manner. He first makes a strong case that crime is an extremely important and costly problem in America today. Drawing on decades of academic and policy experience he then manages to summarize the history and current state of the field in a fluent and succinct style. He concludes by constructing a convincing argument for his idea of concentrating law enforcement mechanisms in high crime areas as the most efficient means for decreasing the huge burden of crime on American society. This argument is intertwined throughout with relevant data, case studies, and an eye to the practical aspects of crime control that are of interest to the academic, policy analyst, and lay person alike.

Superb, evidence-based analysis of America's crime and punishment problem
Professor Kleiman employs psychology, economics, game theory, and real-world examples to explain why harsher punishments are often less effective at controlling the behavior of criminals than targeted, swift and certain punishments. He persuasively argues that we can significantly reduce crime and punishment (particularly punishment of the prison incarceration variety) by focusing enforcement resources to make the threat of getting caught and going to jail a real threat thereby reducing the costs on society of crime, punishment, and the steps taken by law-abiding citizens to protect themselves from crime. A thoroughly enlightening read, When Brute Force Fails forced me to think about the costs to society crime causes in a way I had never considered before (the price you pay for gas at the pump would likely be less if you didn't have to drive to your job from your home in the suburbs every day. A home you likely own because it is too dangerous to live in the city and the crumbling infrastructure is no place you want to raise your children.) A must read for policy makers and concerned citizens alike.