Crime and what to do about it

Heather Mac Donald and I do a Bloggingheads “diavlog.”

Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute and I discuss crime and what to do about it in the latest Bloggingheads.

Here’s a sample clip.

Heather makes one interesting point I hadn’t thought about: crime-statistics-based police management systems such as CompStat tend to wipe out the effects of racial and class disparities and differential political pull on the allocation of police resources: a burglary counts as a burglary and a homicide as a homicide no matter where it occurs, and the pressure on the local commander to get the numbers down is implacable.

Footnote Yeah, yeah, I know: I don’t display much affect. Unless you’ve done it, you have no idea how weird it is to talk to someone while looking at a camera and not seeing the other person’s face.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com