"Wilson and Petersilia have done it again with their latest book, Crime and Public Policy. They continue to inform the debate about crime, its causes, and potential solutions, leaving it to readers to draw their own conclusions, because there is no consensus, uniformity, or 'silver bullet.' The great crime reduction debate remains unresolved but better understood because of this must-read analysis."--William Bratton, former Chief, Los Angeles Police Department and former Commissioner, New York Police Department "Once again, Wilson and Petersilia have produced THE indispensable volume on crime and public policy. Taken together, these chapters underscore the rapid growth in our knowledge base about crime and the effectiveness of our response to crime. Yet the book also serves as an insistent reminder of the great divide between knowledge and practice. In the right hands, this book can help us bridge that divide."--Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice "Wilson and Petersilia, outstanding scholars on their own, have outdone themselves. The fourth version of their series on crime and public policy brings together twenty-one very strong chapters on current knowledge and recent developments about crime and about the responses of the criminal justice system, each written by acknowledged experts who are at the top of their field."--Alfred Blumstein, J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research, Carnegie Mellon University "This edition of Crime and Public Policy is the latest and best in the series. There is something worth reading in each chapter, most especially those on policing and prisons, and the concluding summary by Wilson. For any crime scholar, policymaker, criminal justice practitioner, or interested citizen to miss this volume would be a crime."--John DiIulio, Professor, University of Pennsylvania "...A worthwhile purchase for any sociologist interested in summaries of work in other disciplines on the current state of criminal justice policy." --Contemporary Sociology

Selling point: A fresh, substantial, and timely update to one of the most authoritative and widely-used texts on crime and public policy Selling point: New chapters on youth crime prevention, street gangs, race and criminal justice, substance-abuse policy, sentencing, and more

James Q. Wilson, an emeritus professor at UCLA, is now Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and a distinguished fellow at the Clough Center at Boston College. Joan Petersilia is Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and co-director for the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.

Selling point: A fresh, substantial, and timely update to one of the most authoritative and widely-used texts on crime and public policy Selling point: New chapters on youth crime prevention, street gangs, race and criminal justice, substance-abuse policy, sentencing, and more