Bücher von William R. Kelly

The Crisis in America's Criminal Courts highlights a variety of problems that judges, prosecutors, and public defenders face within a criminal justice system that is ineffective, unfair, and extraordinarily expensive. While many argue, and I agree, that crushing caseloads and court dockets certainly qualify as a crisis, I suggest there is a much greater crisis in the courts that results in profound downstream effects on criminal justice performance and outcomes. It sounds simple, but the greatest risk faced by the justice system is the lack of time, expertise, and resources for effective decision-making. In this book, I propose a variety of evidence-based reforms that, as a start, provide the key decision-makers with professional clinical experts to accurately assess and advise regarding mitigating the circumstances that bring individuals into the courts. We must rebalance. We need incarceration for those who are too dangerous or violent or who are habitual offenders. For most of the rest, we need to manage risk, but very importantly, it is time to get serious about behavioral change. We need to change the culture of the courthouse and reorient how we think about crime and punishment.

With recidivism rates north of 70% and tens of billions of dollars wasted annually on policies that assume we can punish the crime out of criminal offenders, America's fixation with "tough on crime" has been an utter failure. William R. Kelly lays out a roadmap for how to effectively reduce recidivism, crime, victimization and cost.

Setting out to identify differences in recidivism and the crime rate as a result of the changes instituted in Texas, the authors report the findings of their comparative "survival analysis" of 4 successive cohorts of parolees, plus a chapter specifically directed at a comparative analysis of an emergency release cohort.

Confronting Underground Justice identifies major problems with plea negotiation and the pretrial system and provides transformative recommendations to reduce crime and recidivism.

From Retribution to Public Safety places clinical assessment and intervention of mentally, intellectually and neurocognitively disordered offenders squarely in the middle of criminal justice reform and develops a roadmap for appropriate changes to criminal law and procedure as well as public health.