"Can Less Punishment Reduce Crime?" September 29, 2009

Doing the crime almost always means doing time. Since the 1960s, the U.S. prison population has increased fivefold. Prisons today hold one inmate for every one hundred adults — a record rate in American history, and one unmatched by any other country. But despite the high prison population, crime has stopped falling. Punishments can seem random in their severity and implementation, minorities and the poor still disproportionately become victims and inmates, and enforcement — particularly of probation and parole — is haphazard. How can crime be controlled? UCLA Public Policy professor Mark Kleiman, author of When Brute Force Fails, visits Zócalo to offer a new strategy for cutting crime, reducing the prison population, and still enacting swift, certain, and fair punishment.
Zócalo Public Square is a non-profit organization that builds community by broadening access to civic discourse. We present smart ideas in an open, welcoming, non-partisan, multi-ethnic space. Zócalo launched in Los Angeles in 2003. Since then the “public square” has traveled as far as Shanghai.
Please visit www.zocalopublicsquare.org for the latest news and information.

ADMISSION:
Free, reservations recommended at www.zocalopublicsquare.org
Open to the public.

Official Website: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/lectureseries.php?event_id=330