The development of crime policy in the United States for many generations has been hampered by a drastic shortage of knowledge and data, an excess of partisanship and instinctual responses, and a one-way tendency to expand the criminal justice system. Even if a three-decade pattern of prison growth came to a full stop in the early 2000s, the current decade will be by far the most punitive in U.S. history, hitting some minority communities particularly hard.
The book examines the history, scope, and effects of the revolution in America's response to crime since 1970. Henry Ruth and Kevin Reitz offer a comprehensive, long-term, pragmatic approach to increase public understanding of and find improvements in the nation's response to crime. Concentrating on meaningful areas for change in policing, sentencing, guns, drugs, and juvenile crime, they discuss such topics as new priorities for the use of incarceration; aggressive policing; the war on drugs; the need to switch the gun control debate to a focus on crime gun regulation; a new focus on offenders' transition from confinement to freedom; and the role of private enterprise.
A book that rejects traditional liberal and conservative outlooks, The Challenge of Crime takes a major step in offering new approaches for the nation's responses to crime.
Henry Ruth served in many criminal justice roles, including the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, the Deputy Attorney General's Office of the U.S. Department of Justice, and President Lyndon Johnson's National Crime Commission.
Kevin R. Reitz is James Annenberg La Vea Land Grant Chair in Criminal Procedure Law at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Crime and Punishment: A Brief American History
2. Knowledge and Assessment
3. The Current Era of Crime Response Policy
4. Prisons and Jails
5. Public and Private Paths to Security from Crime
6. Guns, Crime, and Crime Gun Regulation
7. Crime, Alcohol, and Illegal Drugs
8. Juvenile Crime
The Future
Notes
Index
What People are Saying About This
The Challenge of Crime should be required reading for anyone interested in improving our justice systems. The authors have not only documented the last thirty years of research and reform but have also helped us understand our successes and failures. No serious student of criminal justice can afford to ignore this book.
John E. Eck
Ruth and Reitz have produced a powerful and exceptionally useful critique of how the United States grapples with crime. Their sharp analysis and valuable prescriptions will frame crime policy development throughout this century. John E. Eck, University of Cincinnati
Franklin E. Zimring
Henry Ruth and Kevin Reitz have distilled a generation's worth of learning into a fresh and nonideological examination of American crime and crime control. Clear, well-informed, and candid, The Challenge of Crime is a major study of the current state of criminal justice and the prospects for its reform. Franklin E. Zimring, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
Norval Morris
This meticulous survey of the last thirty years of American criminal justice amounts to a powerful indictment. But Ruth and Reitz go beyond mere criticism, recommending rational policies to escape from our excesses of crime and punishment and to clear the way to lower rates of crime that will be met by proportional, fair, and effective responses. Further proof that at last criminology is coming of age, The Challenge of Crime merits serious attention. Norval Morris, University of Chicago Law School
Richard Frase
The Challenge of Crime seeks to understand and improve America's response to crime through a system-wide, long-term, empirically based approach. The authors refute many frequently heard arguments of both liberals and conservatives, and propose solutions that can gain broad political acceptance. Modern criminal justice simply cannot be properly understood and significantly improved without this kind of comprehensive, pragmatic approach. Richard Frase, University of Minnesota Law School
Charles Wellford
The Challenge of Crime should be required reading for anyone interested in improving our justice systems. The authors have not only documented the last thirty years of research and reform but have also helped us understand our successes and failures. No serious student of criminal justice can afford to ignore this book. Charles Wellford, University of Maryland