Perspectives on Crime and Justice

As a Nation, we are very fortunate to have a robust academic community that thinks, researches, writes, teaches, and talks about the issues of crime and justice. Members of that academic community-including legal scholars, sociologists, economists, philosophers, organizational theorists, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, and a small army of criminologists-look at these issues in profoundly different ways. As a Nation we also are blessed with a national character trait that allows us to be open to many new ideas about the policies that we should adopt as we respond to the challenges of crime and justice. The ideas "in the air" today represent a stunning array of different and sometimes divergent policies and issues: truth in sentencing, restorative justice, waiver of juvenile offenders to adult court, problem-solving policing, zero tolerance, coerced abstinence, community prosecution, community notification, concealed weapons detection technology, right-to-carry statutes, home nurse visitation programs, community policing, hair testing, mandatory arrest, electronic bracelets, assessment centers, and reparative sentencing boards, to name a few. It is understandably hard to keep track of all of these new ideas, and it is harder still to think about designing, funding, and implementing rigorous evaluations of these new initiatives-particularly because so much of today's exciting innovation is happening at the local level and seldom rises to national attention. One way we can take a broader, deeper, and more critical view of our society's responses to crime and justice is to ask the national treasure that is our academic community to provide a policy perspective on the big issues, to help us keep the big picture in focus. To that end, we have asked some of the country's most prominent academics to put aside for the moment their latest research project, step outside the classroom, take a break from the latest book, and come to Washington and share their thoughts with a policymaking audience.