Start Here: A Practical Guide to Reducing Incarceration

We are living at the beginning of the end of mass incarceration in America. Notwithstanding the posturing at the federal level, states have begun to take real steps to keep their citizens out of prisons. And yet the two million teenagers who report that they've used an illegal drug in the last month still remain at risk of arrest, and many will face the trauma of being cuffed and fingerprinted. The good news is that it's easy to change their lives for the better, right now: we just need to change our policies. This is but one example of the pragmatic case that Greg Berman and Julian Adler build in Start Here, which moves from abstract critique of the justice system to concrete action. Berman and Adler present three overarching, revolutionary ideas, each supported with a litany of practical solutions and battle-tested programs that could be implemented nationwide: to engage the public in preventing crime, to treat all defendants with dignity and respect, and to link people to effect