MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Edited by DAVID P. FARRINGTON AND ROGER TARLING

FROM THE PREFACE: Prediction has always been an important topic in criminology. • Prediction instruments have been used extensively to aid criminal justice decisionmakers, most notably in selecting prisoners for parole. Current uses of prediction methods include the identification of offenders for a policy of "selective incapacitation" and the identifiction of dangerous offenders. Prediction methods are also used to evaluate different kinds of penal treatments and to assess the likely effects of penal policy changes on the criminal justice system. As a by-product of this substantive research, a good deal of attention has been paid to the statistical and methodological issues involved in constructing sound prediction instruments.

Albany. SUNY Press. 1985. 284p.

By Norval Morris and Gordon Hawkins

FROM THE JACKET: "We have a cure for crime," Morris and Hawkins boldly state. *We offer not a lightning panacea but rather a legislative and administrative regimen which would substantially reduce crime and the fear of crime." Crime seriously impairs the quality of life in this country. We hesitate to walk at night in our cities. Our level of criminal violence shocks the world. "To the student of comparative criminal statistics the United States may or may not be the land of the free, but it is most certainly the home of the brave." "There is now available to us," the authors argue, "a fund of information on the subject which, were it acted upon responsibly and steadily, would reduce crime and curtail the fear, suffering, and unhappiness it entails. It is not lack of knowledge, but rather a failure of political responsibility, that supports our present luxuriant crime rates." Hence the program this book offers is directed to the politicians and to the concerned citizens who are responsible for them….

Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1970.