How to Reduce Incarceration and Crime
Posted at 3:15 p.m. on Jan. 25
“The need to punish past offenses and control future offenses more effectively—and with much more sparing use of jails and prisons—could hardly be clearer,” argues Mark Kleiman, laying out a vision for a system that can reduce both crime and incarceration.
“A parent who acted the way the probation system acts—letting most misconduct go unpunished, and occasionally lashing out with ferocious punishments—would be called both neglectful and abusive… But it turns out to be possible to make ‘swift-certain-not-severe’ sanctions work, by giving each offender a clear and explicit warning of exactly what’s going to happen every time he gets caught breaking a rule.”
