Focusing on the challenges within the U.S. criminal justice system, this revised edition examines the mistakes that have contributed to its current issues. Berman and Fox aim to foster open discussions about criminal justice, emphasizing that many initiatives fail and the path to reducing crime remains uncertain. The book includes a new foreword by Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., and an afterword by Greg Berman, enhancing its relevance for students and scholars in law, criminology, and political science.
We are living at the beginning of the end of mass incarceration in America. Notwithstanding the posturing at the federal level, states have begun to take real steps to keep their citizens out of prisons. And yet the two million teenagers who report that they've used an illegal drug in the last month still remain at risk of arrest, and many will face the trauma of being cuffed and fingerprinted. The good news is that it's easy to change their lives for the better, right now: we just need to change our policies. This is but one example of the pragmatic case that Greg Berman and Julian Adler build in Start Here, which moves from abstract critique of the justice system to concrete action. Berman and Adler present three overarching, revolutionary ideas, each supported with a litany of practical solutions and battle-tested programs that could be implemented nationwide: to engage the public in preventing crime, to treat all defendants with dignity and respect, and to link people to effect
Written in a spirit of forward-looking, pragmatic optimism, Gradual is a call to arms for the millions of Americans who are turned off by the overheated rhetoric, gloomy outlook, and unrealistic aspirations that characterize so much of political discourse in the social media era. Based on the authors' real-world experience reforming the criminal justice system, Gradual makes the case that, even in an age of radical rhetoric, the best way to help the United States live up to its highest ideals is a commitment to continuous, incremental change.