NCJ Number
182178
Editor(s)
Edward L. Rubin
Date Published
1999
Length
222 pages
Annotation
The 15 authors of this book present and explain a pragmatic crime policy for America that combines academic insights about crime prevention with the realities of contemporary politics.
Abstract
The studies collectively outline a coherent policy that centers on "minimizing harm," as opposed to retribution, eliminating crime, or solving the social problems that generate criminal behavior. Minimizing harm implies a compromise between the best current research and the concerns of citizens. The book consists of four principal studies that focus on public attitudes toward crime, prevention, alternative sanctions, and drug policy. The four principal studies speak simultaneously to the need for rational public policy and the need to address citizen concerns. One paper argues that criminal justice resources should be directed toward violent crime, because this is the real source of citizen concern, even if the citizens themselves displace that concern to other areas. Another paper argues that policymakers should focus on prevention programs that are directed at potentially violent individuals and that produce reasonably fast results. A third paper reasons that alternative sanctions should be explored only for those offenders who have not committed violent crimes that anger citizens, and that even these nonviolent criminals must be subjected to a regime that citizens regard as punitive. A fourth paper argues that policymakers should seek ways to treat addicts, decreasing the harm they do to themselves and others, within the current framework of criminal sanctions for drug selling and drug use. 9 tables, 12 figures, and chapter references