When Brute Force Fails

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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 In ... When Brute Force Fails, Kleiman argues that such capricious enforcement undermines efforts to reduce crime, and moreover that tough penalties--such as the long sentences that have contributed to clogged prisons--don't do much to help, despite their high cost. The alternative, Kleiman suggests, is a paradigm called 'swift and certain' justice, first proposed by Cesare Beccaria in the 18th century: immediate, automatic penalties--though not necessarily severe ones--doled out by credible, identifiable figures... [I]t seems likely that the invasive surveillance model, combining tracking technology and the Kleiman/Alm paradigm of 'swift and certain' justice, could offer an alternative to much of the waste--in human as well as economic terms--of our current, dysfunctional system. -- Graeme Wood Atlantic 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