From Retribution to Public Safety
Disruptive Innovation of American Criminal Justice
By (author) William R. Kelly With Robert Pitman, William Streusand
Publication date:
25 May 2017Length of book:
234 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442273887
Over the past fifty years, American criminal justice policy has had a nearly singular focus – the relentless pursuit of punishment. Punishment is intuitive, proactive, logical, and simple. But the problem is that despite all of the appeal, logic, and common sense, punishment doesn't work. The majority of crimes committed in the United States are by people who have been through the criminal justice system before, many on multiple occasions.
There are two issues that are the primary focus of this book. The first is developing a better approach than simple punishment to actually address crime-related circumstances, deficits and disorders, in order to change offender behavior, reduce recidivism, victimization and cost. And the second issue is how do we do a better job of determining who should be diverted and who should be criminally prosecuted.
From Retribution to Public Safety develops a strategy for informed decision making regarding criminal prosecution and diversion. The authors develop procedures for panels of clinical experts to provide prosecutors with recommendations about diversion and intervention. This requires a substantial shift in criminal procedure as well as major reform to the public health system, both of which are discussed in detail.
Rather than ask how much punishment is necessary the authors look at how we can best reduce recidivism. In doing so they develop a roadmap to fix a fundamentally flawed system that is wasting massive amounts of public resources to not reducing crime or recidivism.
There are two issues that are the primary focus of this book. The first is developing a better approach than simple punishment to actually address crime-related circumstances, deficits and disorders, in order to change offender behavior, reduce recidivism, victimization and cost. And the second issue is how do we do a better job of determining who should be diverted and who should be criminally prosecuted.
From Retribution to Public Safety develops a strategy for informed decision making regarding criminal prosecution and diversion. The authors develop procedures for panels of clinical experts to provide prosecutors with recommendations about diversion and intervention. This requires a substantial shift in criminal procedure as well as major reform to the public health system, both of which are discussed in detail.
Rather than ask how much punishment is necessary the authors look at how we can best reduce recidivism. In doing so they develop a roadmap to fix a fundamentally flawed system that is wasting massive amounts of public resources to not reducing crime or recidivism.
Sociologist Kelly, Texas district judge Pitman, and psychiatrist Streusand provide a logical, noteworthy critique of a criminal justice system that continues to maintain high recidivism rates (approximately 65 percent), which exposes hundreds of thousands to victimization and results in exorbitant expenses in direct criminal justice costs (approximately $270 billion yearly). The authors also contend that tough-on-crime policies and the war on drugs have consumed approximately $2 trillion of public money. Their argument is that since its inception, punishment for crime committed does not work, largely because an inventory of its clientele (prisoners) shows multiple disorders, deficits, impairments, and conditions, such as intellectual deficiencies, drug addiction, neurodevelopmental problems, and mental illness that in many cases have caused or strongly affected criminal behavior. Overall, the authors' primary focus is to develop a better approach than to simply punish and address recidivism, victimization, and the staggering costs citizens pay for incarceration. Two suggested changes include determining criminal intent at the onset with a clear option to divert disordered offenders into rehab to directly confront and ameliorate the problematic behavior largely responsible for offending. Well written and argued with an overabundance of methods for improving the negative outcomes of imprisoning offenders.
Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.