Table Of ContentSMARTER CRIME CONTROL
SMARTER CRIME
CONTROL
A Guide to a Safer Future for
Citizens, Communities, and Politicians
Irvin Waller
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Waller, Irvin.
Smarter crime control : a guide to a safer future for citizens, communities, and politicians / Irvin Waller.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-2169-7 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4422-2170-3 (electronic) 1. Crime prevention. I. Title.
HV7431.W3265 2013
364.4--dc23
2013037127
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 Smart Public Safety: Giving Priority to Victims and Taxpayers
PART I ACTIONS FOR SMART CRIME CONTROL
2 Policing: From Overreaction after the Fact to Stopping
Crime before It Harms
3 Justice: Courts That Stop Crime or Do Not
Unnecessarily Interfere
4 Correcting Corrections: Away from Mass Incarceration
and Toward Stopping Crime
PART II ACTIONS FOR SMART PRE-CRIME PREVENTION
5 Preventing Youth from Becoming Repeat Offenders
6 Smarter Prevention of Gun Violence: Targeting Outreach and Control
7 Preventing Violence against Women
8 Preventing Violence on the Road and Alcohol-Related Violence
9 Preventing Property Crime in Communities, by Communities
PART III AN AGENDA TO PUT SAFETY FIRST FOR VICTIMS
AND TAXPAYERS
10 Reinvesting in Smart Public Safety to Spare Victims and Lower Taxes
Principal Sources
Notes
List of Figures
List of Tables
Index
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his book builds on the extraordinary network of titans with whom I have worked for more
than forty years, in and out of governments, across the world, but particularly in Canada,
France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I recognized each of their special
contributions to my life and work in my previous books for interested readers, Less Law, More
Order and Rights for Victims of Crime.
I felt a need to do more than those books because getting smart on crime had reached a
critical moment—“Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”
Political and police leaders were changing their discourse. They have started to use phrases
such as “smart on crime,” which were part of Less Law, More Order. They are admitting that
they cannot arrest their way out of crime, and they want to match effective social prevention
and smart enforcement. They are exercised by the failure of the war on drugs and mass
incarceration.
My network of persons dedicated to using evidence to stop violence has been expanded by
the extraordinary new world of social media, where like-minded professionals and advocates
for victims can share and debate the latest developments. Some of them are referenced in this
book, and others know that I learn from them. Three events brought to my attention on Twitter
changed this book and my passion. The first was Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which caught the pulse of a nation (and the
New York Times best-seller list) by demonstrating that mass incarceration is extraordinarily
racially biased and counterproductive for their communities. The second was the Institute of
Medicine’s comprehensive analysis of the health gap for US young people, which showed the
inability of extraordinary spending and cutting-edge health care (and hyperincarceration) to
keep young men in America alive compared to other affluent democracies. The third was an
initiative by a group of superstars and super change agents who took their view of mass
incarceration and the war on drugs right to the president of the United States, who has already
started to quote the irrefutable cost benefits of investing in preschool as a way to stop crime
(seven dollars saved for every dollar invested) and lifeskills training to stop drug abuse
(eighteen dollars saved for every dollar invested).
This book has benefitted immeasurably from the editorial skills and support of Elizabeth
Bond. The figures and tables are the work of Pierre Bertrand. I hope the product justifies the
sacrifices of those around me, particularly the patience and vision of my wife and partner.
So this book is dedicated to all those who have dedicated their careers to stopping the
violence, sparing the lives of victims, and confronting the reality that more young men’s lives
are lost to violence because more young men’s lives are lost behind bars—and not the reverse.
But it is particularly dedicated to those in the generations that follow mine who are rekindling
the torch to light a smarter way forward and persuading politicians to reinvest smartly in the
number one right of victims of crime—to live in communities that are safe from violence.
Irvin Waller
Ottawa, Canada
PREFACE
“Safety is the first of our civil rights, and freedom from violence is the first of our freedoms.”
—Connie Rice, Civil Rights Lawyer
T
he United States is the world’s richest (and most medically advanced) nation. Among the
affluent democracies (a term that I use to refer to the main nations of Western Europe, North
America, and Australasia), it also has the highest rates of young men dying in homicides, traffic
crashes, and drug overdoses. The United States has developed the most scientific knowledge
about how to stop that violence—but it uses the least.
Smarter Crime Control confronts this extraordinary gorilla in the room and provides
practical and affordable solutions that enhance public safety while saving taxes. It transforms
the wealth of scientific knowledge on what stops violence—chapter by chapter—into precise
actions on which legislators can act. And if the legislators acted on those reforms to reinvest a
modest 10 percent of what is spent on law enforcement, courts, and corrections, they would
spare innumerable victims a whopping $300 billion every year in loss of quality of life.
Further, the United States that believes in smaller government is spending more per capita on
bigger government to react to crime than any other affluent democracy. While the United
Kingdom has reacted to lower crime rates by cutting its more modest government expenditures
by no less than 20 percent in the areas of policing and corrections, the United States has
continued to spend more while benefitting from a similar unprecedented decline.
Smarter Crime Control shows how to reinvest to stop violence and so spare victims while
saving money for taxpayers because crime is down. It shows how to save additional taxes by
stopping the use of incarceration for offenses that do not incur harm to victims. While
reinvesting 10 percent from what is spent currently on reaction to crime to get cost-effective
prevention and smart crime control that spares victims, it also saves billions for taxpayers. So
a 20 percent cut (as in the United Kingdom) would spare victims to the tune of $300 billion
and provide a 10 percent tax rebate, while getting much more savings for taxpayers by cutting
out what does not work.
Smarter Crime Control estimates annual savings to taxpayers as high as $100 billion, even
after paying for the reinvestment in cost-effective public safety. This would be achieved while
dropping crime rates further, but would require cutting mass incarceration to rates similar to
periods in the United States when rates of violence were as low as today and ultimately to
rates similar to other affluent democracies. The evidence shows that this can be done without
increasing risk to crime victims.
Each chapter looks at the hard evidence of what would stop violence and then lists legislative
actions. In part I, the book focuses on where police, courts, and corrections can safely regroup,
cut actions that are ineffective, and retool to be more effective in sparing victims. In part II, it
identifies legislative actions from the evidence that would not only stop youth from becoming
chronic offenders but cut in half or more a range of major challenges for victims of crime,
including gun violence, violence against women, traffic fatalities, and property crime.
The extraordinary rates of street violence in the United States are not new. They were so bad
in the 1960s that no less than three presidential commissions produced pragmatic
recommendations on how to stop the bleeding—one with the title of “The Challenge of Crime
in a Free Society.” Fifty years later, we have accumulated not only more experience of the
limits of modern law enforcement, criminal justice, and corrections, but a wealth of scientific
studies about what does and does not prevent violence and at what cost to taxpayers, most of
which was developed in the United States.
The United States is the nation most proudly dedicated to civil rights and freedom. Even in
the 1960s, while civil rights marched forward, the country incarcerated at rates double those of
any other free democracy and already one third higher than the modest average rate of
incarceration for the world today. But unfortunately for victims of violence, its various orders
of government ignored the recommendations from those commissions on how to prevent
violence and regrettably quadrupled its rates of incarceration in the name of justice,
reinforcing racial biases so severely that a New York Times best-seller called it “The New Jim
Crow.”
But not only are blacks—the term I will use in this book because the major sources of
statistics use it—incarcerated at rates much higher than whites. But these high rates of
incarceration fail to eliminate the huge disparities in risk of homicide victimizations between
blacks and whites and Hispanics—also the term I will use because it is used by the main
statistical agencies.
Now, not only does the United States have the world’s highest rates of homicides, traffic
crashes, and drug overdoses, the population behind bars is also so vast that it is unimaginable
in any other free democracy on the planet. Some say the country has operated like an
incarceration addict: when the dose did not work, it was increased—over and over again.
Those operating this criminal justice complex (and their sociological apologists) justify the
incarceration addiction as being what victims of crime advocated. But that is not most victims,
and it is certainly not what protects most victims. Yes, a system that ignores the needs of
victims rightly leads to anger. And yes, the United States does not have a monopoly on those
victims—whose lives have been shattered by inexcusable violence—who cry out justifiably
for draconian sentences. But that is not what modern justice is about and certainly not what
stops violence.
Violence, though, is not inevitable; it is preventable. And what most victims really want is
for the violence to stop. The scientists of the United States—the world’s most powerful nation
—one that is conquering outer space and finding cures for cancer—have not been asleep since
the days of those commissions. A group of criminological titans has been exploring what
prevents violence by using longitudinal studies, random control trials, and collaborative meta-
analyses. Today there is an extraordinary arsenal of knowledge as well as programs that have
earned a consumer seal of approval because there is scientific proof that they stop violence. So
why is this arsenal not being used in the United States or in other affluent democracies?
This book is unique in many ways. It focuses on ways to stop violence, which
disproportionally impacts young Hispanic and particularly black men, different from so many
books that focus only on the racial bias in the use of incarceration. It focuses on what
reinvestments prevent violence before victims are hurt in the first place, rather than headlining
small shifts in reentry after incarceration. It focuses on what is cost-effective in pre-crime
prevention rather than whether more costly repressive law enforcement can suppress crime. It
puts trends in the United States in the perspective of trends in affluent democracies, rather than
whether a US trend can be interpreted in isolation. But it uses US statistics and US knowledge,
because they are the best in the world. As a result, its conclusions provide immeasurable hope
for victims in the United States but also for other affluent democracies.
This book guides citizens, communities, and politicians to the proven actions that will stop
violence, traffic crashes, and drug overdoses and so make communities safer. It proposes a
pragmatic road map to stop waste—communities that are not as safe as modern science shows
is possible, lives of young men warehoused in mass incarceration instead of contributing to
communities, and taxes spent on what does not work rather than what is effective and cost-
effective. Each chapter provides a short list of actions that politicians can take in the name of
citizens to stop violence. If they act on this guide, they will provide smart public safety for
ourselves and for the next generations, not only in the United States, but across the planet.
