cover image Crimes of Justice

Crimes of Justice

David C. Anderson, Anderson C.. Crown Publishers, $17.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8129-1607-2

As the former publisher of Police and Corrections magazines, New York Times editor Anderson is expert on his subject and offers salient observations on the current state of criminal justice, together with striking suggestions on how improvements might be made. The philosophy of imprisonment and execution fails, he maintains. Increasingly the police are functioning as social workers, and Anderson stresses that this aspect of their work should be expanded. The courts, choked with cases and often restrained from adding to the prison population, should develop more effective probation systems, vastly different from most current arrangements, which are unrealistic, according to the author. Finally, our snake-pit prisons, many of them actually run by the inmates, should offer convicts real work for real pay, preparing them for life on the outside. (March)