US crime victims and taxpayers could benefit from reductions in mass incarceration and particularly new cost effective approaches to reducing violent deaths, but it has not happened yet–despite NYT headlines! A new book on Smarter Crime Control will be released in November, which could guide a real shift–saving hundreds of billions of harm to victims and avoid as much as $100 billion in wasted taxes!
- US has far higher rates of deaths from gun homicides, traffic crashes and drug overdoses than any other affluent democracy So where is the new approach?
- US incarcerates 20% of everyone known to be incarcerated in the world for 5% of the world´s population. Shifting inmates from State prisons to local jails hardly qualifies as the end of mass incarceration or indeed rethinking crime policy. BTW US uses incarceration as its main way of reacting to homicides and drugs (in a New Jim Crow manner!). Where is the new approach?
- US consumes 25% of world´s narcotics for only 5% of the world´s population. Where is the new approach?
- US has produced more scientific knowledge on violence prevention and on its cost effectiveness than the rest of the world put together. Incarceration does not score well on effectiveness and decidedly worse on cost effectiveness. Where is this new approach being used?
- The US makes this knowledge available on its own government websites for free to the world, but uses almost none of it, itself. Why not shift to an effective and cost effective preventive approach?
These and other statistics are the reason for a new book to guide the public and politicians on proven new approaches and how to put them into action – Smarter Crime Control – to be published in the US in November. It is Smarter Crime Control: Guide to future safety for citizens, communities and politicians.
