It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.
This is the fundamental principle of good legislation,
which is the art of conducting men to the
maximum of happiness, and to the minimum of
misery, if we may apply this mathematical
expression to the good and evil of life…. (Cesare
Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments 1764).
Beccaria’s words from the eighteenth century
ring perhaps even more true today. Indeed, the
recent history of criminal justice reform in the
contemporary USA suggests that we have not yet
learned the lesson Beccaria was attempting to teach
us. Without a doubt, criminologists have long
argued for the necessity of prevention. But, for a
variety of reasons, that message got lost in favor of
a “war on crime.” The consequences of that war
have been astounding. The USA became the world
leader in incarceration, with unprecedented growth
in the prison population and the population under
correctional control (Blumstein and Beck 1999;
Western 2006; Garland 2001). As of 2008, more
than 2 million individuals were in either prison or
jail, and an additional 5 million people were under
community supervision via probation or parole
(Pew Center on the States 2009).