When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment

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. Poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. When Brute Force Fails explains how we got into this trap, and how we can cut both crime and the prison population in half within a decade.

Mark Kleiman describes the recent revolution-largel...