Chapter 7 Anaysis - Crime without Punishment from Kleiman's When Brute Force Fails

For this assignment I will be summarizing chapter 7 titled “Crime without Punishment” from Kleiman's When Brute Force Fails . This chapter is broken into different short topics, I will be summarizing the chapter in the that order. In the introduction Kleiman begins with the statement that “punishment is costly to inflict and painful to undergo” (p. 117). The introduction states that we need to find ways to reduce crime without increasing punishment and hurting people. He says that crime accompanies social disadvantage and that those who commit crime have bad decision making skills and lack of self command. The conclusion he draws at the end of the introduction is that “crime is a cause and consequence of social disadvantage” (p.117).

The first topic of the chapter is the two “root causes” claims which focuses on the question of why just improving social conditions is not enough to solve the problem of high crime rates. The conclusion that he draws is that there is a correlation between socio-economic conditions and crime rates however, they are not dependent on one another which is why just improving social conditions is not the best method to lower the crime rates. The evidence for this is “the crime collapse of the 1994-2004 period” which was not a period of greatly improved conditions (p.118). The second topic in the chapter is cost- effectiveness and targeting which focuses the question of why we do not just spend more money on social programs instead of expanding the criminal justice operations. This topic also discusses target efficiency which means to deliver help where there is an apparent problem. The conclusion states that we should place some responsibility on large systems like health care with large budgets instead ...

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...e. I think there should have been more evidence and analysis added to this section to support the policy conclusion.

To conclude I want to discuss the section that was the most confusing for me, the lead and environment issues sections. I understand that small amounts of lead can make changes in the brain and can lead to poor decision making which can lead to criminal activity. What I do not understand is why lead is considered a big deal, because there are other things that can lead to flawed decision making such as drugs and alcohol so why does Kleiman emphasize lead. I am still confused how small amounts of lead makes such a big difference maybe adding some scientific evidence or explanation would make this section more clear. Overall chapter 7 was a very good chapter and I did learn a lot of ways to address crime without using punishment which was the main idea.