Excerpted from the 3rd edition: (Copyright, Prentice-Hall, 2009)
Where to Go from Here: Alternatives to Current Criminal Justice Practice
This book has shown you that the U.S. criminal justice network fails to achieve its goals of doing justice and reducing crime. Of course, it is easy to criticize people, institutions, and policies without attempting to suggest alternatives. This seems to be the American way: we know how to criticize but are less well equipped to offer alternatives for our own failed policies.
To counter this, in this chapter I provide 50 recommendations for creating positive change within the U.S. criminal justice network. Each recommendation suggests an alternative to the current direction of criminal justice policy in the United States. Because the recommendations stem directly from the literature reviewed in this book, I arrange them in a manner consistent with the overall organization of the book. Thus, I offer recommendations in the following areas: general recommendations about government and informing citizens; recommendations about law and crime; recommendations about the media; recommendations about police; recommendations about the courts and sentencing; and recommendations about corrections.
I firmly believe that we can change the direction of American criminal justice to make it more just and more effective at reducing crime. These recommendations are a step in that direction (for other ideas, see Currie’s Crime and Punishment in America, 1998).
Before I move to the specific recommendations, I offer a few words about predicting the future. There are many texts that essentially guess at the future of American criminal justice. One, Visions for Change: Crime and Justice in the Twenty-First Century, by Muraskin and Roberts (1999), is particularly helpful because of its breadth of scope. In the final chapter, Muraskin (1999: 435) asks: “Can we predict the future with any precision?” She answers: “Probably not.” She notes, however—consistent with the great majority of criminologists and criminal justice scholars—that crime problems will be solved “not by the building of bigger and better cells, but through education, alternative programs, and [by] stopping problems before they begin.... Violence is a symptom of other problems and we must deal with those problems” (p. 436).
In the next section, I offer suggestions for preventing crime and promoting justice in the United States. I believe our only hope lies in the careful creation of criminal justice policies that strive to move away from the reactive, carelessly constructed criminal justice policies of the late twentieth century. As Muraskin explains: “Policies are needed that attack the root of the problem. ‘Band-aid’ programs do not work. Without strong policies, the next millennium will see crime as a growing and larger problem than in prior centuries” (1999: 436).General Recommendations about Government and Informing Citizens
1. Our government should write clear statements reflecting the goals of American criminal justice.
Given the importance of justice as a process, due process values should be emphasized over crime control values. At every step of the criminal justice process, we must ensure that every individual’s Constitutional rights are protected and that innocent people are not wrongfully subjected to criminal justice processes. In other words, we must act in ways consistent with the ideal of “innocent until proven guilty.” The first step is to reorganize the thousands of criminal justice agencies into something more like a system.2. Our government should develop clearly stated policies of government aimed at not discriminating on the basis of race, social class, and gender.
If justice is to be blind, and thus fair, we must first state clearly that we will not, under any circumstances, tolerate discrimination based on factors such as race, class, and gender. These values should be codified and exhibited by government for all to see.3. The government should also make a commitment to evaluate the performance of our criminal justice agencies at regular periods of time, in order to assess how well we are achieving our stated goals.
How can we know how well we are doing unless we assess our performance carefully? Evaluation can be relatively inexpensive. Given the importance of the goal of providing justice, an evaluation of the criminal justice network’s performance on a regular basis is warranted. Criminologists and criminal justice experts should be involved in this regular evaluation.
4. To be more effective at reducing crime, our government must encourage a fundamental shift away from punitiveness toward prevention, treatment, and restoration.
Conditions in communities and society that produce criminality must be eliminated, sick people who commit crimes must be treated, and both victims of crime and criminal offenders must work together toward restoration of each to noncriminal and nonvictim status. For this to happen, we must commit ourselves to forgiveness rather than vengeance. Forgiveness is the only mechanism proven to produce peace for victims of crime. Thinking outside the box allows us to imagine forms of community and restorative justice, staffed by normal people trained in conflict and dispute resolution and mediation of common problems.
5. Our government must shift its focus from criminal justice responses to violence toward medical, public-health models to treat violence as an epidemic in the United States.
As I explained in this book, violence is the main problem in the United States when it comes to crime. Crime rates are not exceedingly high relative to other similar countries. Yet, we suffer from alarmingly high rates of violent victimization, especially murder. We must shift our focus away from criminal justice approaches toward public-health approaches to reducing violence by treating violence as the epidemic that it is.
6. Our government should also stop “shooting itself in the foot” by hurting its own citizens. For example, we need to reinvest in American labor—to stop engaging in practices such as downsizing to increase profits and cap CEO/CFO earnings to limit conditions of income inequality.
Government should regulate businesses by requiring victim impact statements when decisions affecting a company’s workers will be made. Politicians who talk about the importance of families should not tolerate the practice of maximizing profits by moving jobs overseas and south of the border at the expense of American workers and families. Sudden unemployment has been related to many adverse consequences, including depression, family instability, and domestic violence. When corporations plan to make decisions that will affect American workers and their families, criminal justice implications should be considered.7. Other legitimate opportunities must be developed for citizens who find themselves living in conditions of poverty.
On the basis of a review of evidence, street crimes are not the most harmful types of crime committed. Yet, street crime is tremendously harmful and disproportionately affects poor people. Politicians claim that poor people choose to commit criminal acts in order to maximize pleasure, gain rewards, earn money, and so forth. Our response, based on this premise, has been to increase the punishments and other pains associated with choosing crime. An alternative to this futile approach would be to increase the benefits associated with choosing noncriminal acts. People should be rewarded for abiding by the law, going to work, and raising their families.
8. Overall, Americans must insist that politics be taken out of crime and criminal justice issues.
Politicians have created cynicism in Americans by using partial facts and distorted truths about crime that have made developing sensible policy impossible. Recall the Willie Horton example discussed in the book. Horton had been out on furlough eight times in Massachusetts without committing any apparent criminal acts. On his ninth release, he committed a rape and aggravated assault. The 1988 presidential candidate, George Bush (the first), used the image of Horton as evidence that his opponent, Michael Dukakis (who was then governor of Massachusetts), was soft on crime. This was, at the least, dishonest of the Bush campaign; at worst, it was deceitful and racist. Politicians promote criminal justice policies that they should know do not and cannot work, and Americans and our media should call them on it rather than giving politicians a free pass to say whatever they want.9. A rational system of planned change should be used to reduce crime in the United States.
Currently, criminal justice policy seems to be made based on subjective decisions, characterized by unreliability, low validity, bias, and variability among decision makers (Gottfredson, 1999: 443). According to Walker (1998: xxi), most American crime control policies simply do not work: “they are nonsense.” Walker critically assesses U.S. criminal justice policy, including both conservative “get tough” approaches and liberal efforts at “rehabilitation,” and concludes that almost none of them is effective. Neither conservative nor liberal approaches are carefully planned. The conservative approach has traditionally involved more police, more prisons, and swifter, harsher punishment, whereas the liberal approach has focused more on rehabilitation and treatment. As noted in Chapter 2, both conservatives and liberals now support more police, more prisons, and the death penalty as effective means of fighting crime.10. The nation’s crime experts must strive to educate citizens about injustice in American criminal justice and about their true risks of victimization.
It is highly unlikely that many Americans are aware of how the criminal law is biased against particular groups of people in the United States. Given our devotion to justice, it is likely that when Americans become aware of injustice, they will revolt against it and demand change, as they did during the civil rights movement. Victims of other forms of culpable harmful acts, such as victims of white-collar deviance, “are often much more confused than are victims of conventional crime about where to turn for help, and a much larger group of such victims are not even conscious about having been victimized” (Friedrichs, 1996: 277). If we truly want to stop victimization, we must make sure people know they are being victimized, and then increase and clarify their options for law enforcement assistance.
Recommendations about Reforming the Law and Crime
11. As the criminal law currently is not made by people who are representative of the population, it should not be a surprise that the criminal law does not serve the interests of most Americans. Thus, we need to make the law more representative by increasing the representativeness of lawmakers.
This would entail increasing informed voting behavior by educating citizens about crime and criminal justice, as well as minimizing and equalizing the funding of elections, candidates, and parties by special interests and lobbying groups.12. We must shift our focus from criminalization to harm reduction.
Americans and their leaders apparently think that we can stop people from engaging in harmful behaviors by criminalizing them. In fact, the most effective controls may very well be informal in nature—that is, instilled by families, peers, churches, and schools rather than by police, courts, and corrections. Instead of criminalizing behaviors to reduce harms, we ought to encourage policies of harm reduction, aimed at preventing harms associated with behaviors such as drug use and abuse. Rather than punishing drug users and sellers, for example, treatment options ought to be available for addicts, and alternative means of employment ought to be made available for sellers, especially once we put them out of business.13. The government must define crimes based on degree of harm caused.
To the degree that the criminal law is necessary, acts ought to be as serious as the harms they cause. This entails careful study (much of which has already been done and is discussed in this book), about which behaviors are really most likely to kill, injure, and result in property loss for Americans. Those behaviors that are most harmful ought to be called the most “serious” and should be the focus of law enforcement, courts, and corrections.14. “Victimless” crimes such as drug use and possession ought to be decriminalized.
American police spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources on some “victimless” street crimes, called this not because they are truly harmless but because they are engaged in by consenting adults so that no one involved feels victimized. The best example is the war on drugs. As explained in this book, law enforcement focus on drug crimes and mandatory sentencing laws that call for longer minimum sentences for drug offenders explain the United States’ unprecedented overreliance on imprisonment. Many of those we are incarcerating are first-time, low-level drug dealers or people who simply were found in possession of marijuana. Meanwhile, victims of other forms of harms are virtually ignored. Drug use can be a normal behavior that occurs in various recreational contexts, and government can decriminalize drug use while simultaneously discouraging people from using drugs. Criminalizing drug use will not deter our children from experimenting. In fact, the illegal status of drugs is precisely what leads to much drug use, as well as a lot of crime and violence in the United States.15. Create and administer a national source of data on white-collar deviance.
To discover more accurately how much damage is caused by these types of acts, our government must create a measure to gather valid data on acts of white-collar deviance, much as it does on street crime. If we are to shift our focus toward the acts that cause the most harm in society, we must first commit ourselves to collecting data on the acts.Recommendations about the Media
16. Educate the media about crime and criminal justice through planned workshops.
The nation’s crime experts can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines, watching the media continue to get it wrong. We seem to know how and why the media are misinforming citizens about the true nature of crime and criminal justice in the United States. It is our responsibility to ensure that this misinformation stops, especially given that most Americans get their crime information from media outlets.17. Insist that the media get it right by reducing consumer demand for sleazy news.
We must encourage citizens to pursue alternative forms of education and news rather than crime shows and sensational news. Research clearly shows that crime entertainment and news promote a “siege mentality” among some viewers, who become more likely to stay inside and to fear the poor and people of color rather than wanting to help them achieve legitimate success. The news media should develop and broadcast clear statements reflecting their intention to cease broadcasting sleazy, sensationalized crime stories.18. Develop a network of contacts between criminal justice scholars and the media.
Every criminologist and criminal justice expert owes it to the nation to insert himself or herself into the media when stories about crime and criminal justice are discussed. We cannot afford to allow politicians and the police to be the primary sources of information about crime and criminal justice in the United States, given their clear biases in favor of the status quo, and because we study crime and criminal justice for a living.19. Utilize, advertise, and celebrate independent media outlets.
One thing we can all do, including criminologists and their students, is use independent media outlets that are not privately owned and that operate with the interests of the people in mind. We ought to tell our colleagues and students and every day people to turn off the television unless they are watching public television, or to at least boycott television shows and networks that sell us crime and criminal justice and harm the nation in so doing.Recommendations about the Police
20. Reorganize police resources (including the numbers of law enforcement officers allocated to each level of government, the types of behaviors they focus on, and the ways in which they use their time) so that victims of all culpable harmful acts, whether legal or illegal, will be served by law enforcement.
Policing in the United States is organized in a manner that mandates that officers focus almost exclusively on street crime victimization. Simultaneously, U.S. police officers spend most of their time doing work not related to crime or victimization. This must change so that police can serve all victims of culpable harms.To correct this, we must do the following:
21. Reallocate policing resources away from local government to states and, to a lesser degree, to the federal government.
22. Increase training of local, state, and federal police on matters related to white-collar deviance.
23. Reallocate policing resources in order to better assist victims of all culpable, harmful acts.We must reeducate police officers about forms of victimization other than street crimes because state and federal officers are currently best equipped, given their special training, to provide assistance to victims of other forms of harm. To ensure that victims of such acts receive sufficient attention, police agencies at the state and federal levels must be granted more resources, including both employees and funding, relative to local police. Local police must be educated about forms of culpable harm other than street crime, particularly to the degree that they will likely be called on to assist with victims of such harms. City and county law enforcement assistance would not be possible unless allocation of local police personnel by location and time was systematically changed from urban areas, where street crime is perceived to occur, to areas where other forms of culpable harms occur. That is, for local police to provide their traditional services to a more diverse set of victims, the times and places they patrol would also change. Since police “tend to respond most emphatically to...events that they perceive as conforming to legal definitions of serious crimes” (Sacco and Kennedy, 1996: 65), they would be unlikely to sympathize with victims of culpable behaviors other than street crimes, unless such acts were recognized as serious crimes by society and treated as such by criminal justice agencies.
Police should devote free time to forms of victimization other than street crimes committed by individuals against individuals. We might also decide as a society to let police exclusively fight victimization, and leave service functions to other agencies. Perhaps we could also redesign our social service agencies to operate on a 24-hour basis, so that police could devote themselves exclusively to fighting victimization and/or crime through their law enforcement function. Given the amount of time police at all levels of government spend on service functions, it is apparent that this time is not being allocated to victim assistance, although it is difficult to ascertain how much police service time is spent on precisely this function. Additionally, many criminal victimizations are never discovered, and virtually all noncriminal victimizations are ignored. From these facts, we can confidently conclude that police are not very effectively serving victims of culpable harms.24. Increase educational qualifications for American police officers to a minimum of a bachelor’s degree.
The Police Executive Research Forum claims that education benefits the police and the community. Through education, police gain greater maturity and increase their knowledge base about criminal justice and American government, as well as an increased understanding and appreciation of people of different cultures (Carter and Sapp, 1993). These factors, along with high intelligence, flexibility, and honesty, have been shown to be related to better policing.25. Increase police officer pay to reduce police corruption.
It is understandable that some good cops will “go bad” when they are paid very little and see huge amounts of money exchanged regularly in criminal enterprises. To reduce the likelihood that police will steal cash from offenders, we must pay our police officers more and create other mechanisms to show our appreciation for the valuable services they provide to Americans.26. Develop mandatory multicultural educational efforts within police academies.
As evidence shows that police disproportionately hassle ethnic minorities and people of color, police should be exposed to more educational materials about other cultures to increase their understanding of, and appreciation for, people unlike themselves, especially given that most police are Caucasians.27. Outlaw the use of police profiling based on race and ethnicity.
There is no valid justification for this practice. Even if profiling results in more arrests, more seizures of evidence related to criminal activity, and so on, the ends cannot be justified by the means. Recall that justice as a process is what criminal justice agencies in America ideally value. Police profiling is an ugly practice that should never be tolerated. We should require police to gather statistics about interactions with citizens and then evaluate each jurisdiction for evidence of racial profiling. When racial profiling is found, departments must be punished accordingly.28. Develop police–community partnerships where they are needed most.
Community policing, the buzzword in policing for the past three decades or so, has not been beneficial to the communities where it is needed most. Inner cities and high-crime areas have witnessed the highest lack of respect for police and the least police involvement in community policing. These are the areas where community policing strategies must be stepped up.Recommendations about the Courts and about Sentencing
29. Reallocate criminal justice resources so that they are more equitable, particularly to “courthouse regular” defense attorneys.
This book has shown that most money spent on criminal justice is allocated to law enforcement and then to corrections. In essence, we spend more money trying to catch criminals and punish them than making sure that we have caught the right ones. Is it any wonder, given the presumption of guilt inherent in plea bargaining, that sometimes we end up punishing the wrong people for crimes they did not commit? If we truly believe in due process and “innocent until proven guilty,” we must give defense attorneys the resources necessary to defend their clients adequately. Ideally, each side must be assured of the resources necessary to take cases to trial.30. Increase representation by racial and ethnic minorities in courtroom workgroups.
As was shown, people of color are underrepresented as members of the courtroom workgroup. Here, the government could assist by providing targeted scholarships to people of color to attend law school, with the stipulation that they will serve a minimum number of years working for the government as officers of the court.31. Reassign sentencing discretion to judges, instead of prosecutors.
The current move to allow prosecutors to decide sentences through the charging process has resulted in an imbalance in the court. Sentencing discretion must reside in the hands of judges, not prosecutors. Judges tell researchers that they do not support mandatory sentences such as three-strikes laws because of their inability to consider mitigating factors when sentencing some of the nation’s truly disadvantaged. Prosecutors, as elected officials, are more likely to be concerned about their image as “tough on crime” and to maintain high conviction rates at virtually any cost. Their discretion must be reduced if we want to ensure that justice is done. This can be accomplished by abolishing mandatory sentences at least for relatively harmless acts.32. Prohibit preventive detention based on the criterion of “to protect the community,” and permit it only when a significant flight risk exists.
Stated plainly, there is no justification for locking up people who have yet to be convicted of criminal offenses. Only under rare circumstances, as when officers witness a person in the act of committing violence or when a person is found to be mentally unstable because of a severe brain disorder, can we justify locking up a person who is supposedly “innocent until proven guilty.” Yet, approximately half of the people now in our nation’s jails have not been convicted of any crimes. These people are being punished without conviction. When preventive detention is used, all efforts must be made to speed up the criminal justice process for these cases in particular.33. Create a system of structured bail based on how much the accused can afford to pay and assess bail outcomes regularly to ensure that bail is not being used to discriminate against any group of persons.
If bail is simply to be used to ensure the presence of the defendant at trial, and not as punishment, unreasonably high bails for the poor cannot be tolerated. Many poor citizens are forced to sit in jail even for accusations of relatively minor criminality because they cannot afford bail. Given the evidence showing biases in bail against the poor and people of color, something must be done to correct bail biases. At regular intervals, bail outcomes should be evaluated to ensure that unreasonably high bail is not being used disproportionately against any group. If bail is found to be differentially applied, mandatory bail amounts should be established by independent assessors of the courts.
34. Prohibit plea bargaining.
The plea bargaining process does not address the guilt or innocence of the accused. Rather, the issue addressed by plea bargaining is what to do about the defendant, who is assumed to be guilty by everyone involved in the criminal justice process. Neither justice as an outcome nor justice as a process is achieved through this process. Decriminalization initiatives would aid in the effort to ensure that court caseloads do not grow to the point where it would be impossible to hold a trial for each criminal case.35. Insist that indigent clients be given quality counsel by creating incentives to represent poor clients zealously.
Part of this incentive should be financial. Courthouse regulars who make their living defending the poor ought to be able to afford to investigate the charges against their clients thoroughly and to mount an adequate defense. Nothing less that justice depends on fair court processes.36. Jurors ought to be selected from sources other than voter lists, for a majority of people in the United States do not vote.
Voters tend to be unrepresentative of the nation’s population, so biases will result against those who do not vote. Alternative jury lists must be created from other sources such as lists of people with driver’s licenses.37. Prohibit the use of peremptory challenges in jury selection.
There is no valid reason to allow any challenge to a juror without adequate cause being stated to (and supported by) a judge. Because peremptory challenges are used to disqualify people of color and people who “look suspicious,” the jury process has been corrupted by the use of these challenges.38. Encourage citizens to participate in jury duty by providing adequate financial compensation.
Jurors provide a valuable service to the country. They are supposed to be the backbone of the criminal justice network, ensuring that arbitrary and overzealous governments do not unnecessarily interfere in the lives of American citizens. Thus, they should be paid a reasonable amount to compensate for their lost wages and service to the government and people of the United States. Jury duty should not be something Americans dread.39. Prohibit the use of jury consultants during voir dire.
The use of jury consultants clearly biases the trial phase in favor of those clients who can hire individuals to hand-pick a jury sympathetic to their case. The poor and, often, people of color do not enjoy this privilege.40. Allow jurors to ask questions and take notes during the trial phase.
Currently, jurors must listen to long trials and complex testimony and other forms of evidence without being able to write anything down or ask questions for clarification. This likely gives more credence to opening and closing arguments than to the actual evidence presented during trial.41. Make jury instructions understandable.
Research clearly shows that jury instructions cannot be understood by many Americans. They should be written with the lay person in mind, and examples of major terms should be provided to help the jury make just decisions. Sample jury instructions can be tested on everyday Americans to make sure they can be understood.42. Require monitoring of jury deliberations.
To be sure that juries are considering only the evidence allowed by judges when making their decisions, jury deliberations should be subjected to judicial review in order to identify and correct unjust jury decisions. This does not mean that jury verdicts should be overturned upon review; it means that when juries use invalid criteria in their decisions, verdicts should be reconsidered by a panel of judges and perhaps adjusted on the basis of legal precedents.43. Acknowledge that deterrence is a myth and not a likely outcome of criminal sentencing.
Very few criminal sanctions provide a deterrent effect, especially for those most likely to commit street crimes. Those with little legitimate opportunity for success—a “stake in conformity”—are far less likely to be scared into crime-free lifestyles when other means of earning income are so restricted and unavailable to them.44. Eliminate three-strikes laws unless it is assured that they will be used only against repeat violent felons (that is, who actually hurt people).
We will inevitably need to lock some criminals away from society for our own protection, but many relatively minor offenders do not warrant such severe sentences. Mandatory sentences are not a cost-effective way to punish these offenders. These sanctions also contribute to the “get tough” approach that permeates much of U.S. society, a major impediment to effective change within the criminal justice network. These laws should only be used against offenders who have committed more than one violent offense, at least one of which led to some actual injury.Recommendations about Corrections
45. Increase the use of intermediate sanctions as cost-effective alternatives to prison.
These sanctions are not necessarily any more effective than prison, but they are certainly less expensive. Many such sanctions are at least considered promising by criminologists and criminal justice experts, but they are not used widely enough to demonstrate how well they work. For relatively minor offenders likely to end up in prison, these sanctions seem to be a better investment.46. Humanize prisons—minimize the pains of imprisonment.
Those criminals who simply must be kept away from society for our protection should not be subjected to unnecessary forms of punishment while incarcerated. Instead, they should be humanely incapacitated and treated as human beings, not as wild animals. Remember, virtually all of them will be released one day.47. Insist on educational and vocational skill development in prison as a criterion for release.
Prisoners should be required to demonstrate that they will likely make it in the free world before they are released. This means correctional facilities must do more than simply warehouse offenders. Imprisoned offenders ought to be encouraged, indeed required, to work, study, make decisions for themselves, and be prepared to live in the free world. This may be unpopular with Americans who want to see the guilty suffer, but it likely will be more effective in preventing future crimes than brutal punishment.48. Shift the role of probation and parole officers to social service functions rather than supervisory, law enforcement functions.
Probationers and parolees are currently sent to prison for violating rules not imposed on free people. This must stop. Those who are charged with supervising the progress of such offenders ought to be rewarded for successes and urged to help offenders make it in the free world by assisting their clients with necessary vocational, educational, and medical rehabilitation.49. Provide more resources for probation and parole officers.
Currently, it is impossible for probation and parole officers to supervise their large caseloads. A society as wealthy as the United States ought to be able to afford to pay for enough officers to ensure successful integration of offenders into society during and after punishment.50. Abolish the death penalty.
The United States is the only industrialized Western nation that still practices capital punishment, a shameful practice that is applied so rarely and arbitrarily that its use is clearly unjust. It is so evidently biased against the poor and minorities that one wonders how it can possibly be legal. There is no valid evidence showing that the death penalty deters crime, and there is some evidence that an opposite effect may occur. Given that we cannot administer the death penalty enough to make it effective, capital punishment should be replaced by an ultimate sanction of life imprisonment without possibility of parole, plus restitution for victims (LWOP+R). An alternative, which most Americans already support, is an immediate moratorium on executions while we determine whether our administration of capital punishment can be fixed.
Likelihood of SuccessI do not pretend that these reforms will be rapidly accepted and implemented in the United States. In fact, considering past efforts by criminologists and criminal justice scholars to make criminal justice processes more just, it may be unwise to expect many of these reforms to be adopted in the immediate future. Yet, change is possible, and, on the basis of the evidence presented in this book, change is necessary. American criminal justice policy is misconceived and dangerous. We must invest in prevention rather than more prisons (Greenwood, 1998).
Most change is gradual, but gradualism can lull us all to sleep. As Americans, we must insist that the criminal justice network achieve justice as both an outcome and a process. The debate over the death penalty is now raging across the country, so it is possible that capital punishment will soon be stopped (probably through a temporary moratorium, but perhaps through a permanent abolition). Some discussion has occurred with regard to police profiling and abuse of power by criminal justice professionals, but less debate is occurring with regard to many of the other issues addressed in this book. I hope this book serves as a starting point for such debate.
Vila (1997) has pointed out how ironic it is that as knowledge about what works to reduce crime becomes clearer, we live in a time when effective or promising efforts are less likely to be implemented. His research, like that presented here, suggests that the media, politicians, and public impatience will be significant barriers to effective change. I advocate a team approach, based on consensus building between the media, politicians, and the public, to bring about effective change. And you, the reader of this book, have a tremendous opportunity to work from within agencies of criminal justice to bring about positive change.
