The U.S. is the world s biggest jailor and one of the most affluent murderous countries, and yet its citizens pay more taxes to sustain law and order than their European counterparts. Yet, the U.S. has the most data in the world on the use of incarceration and its failure. Its researchers have identified more projects able to prevent violence than the rest of the world put together. Its legislators have access to pioneering data banks on cost effective ways to use taxes to reduce crime. We are left wondering why we cannot implement measures that we know will work, reduce crime, and cost less for law and order. Smarter Crime Control shows how to use recent knowledge and best practices to reduce the extraordinarily high rates of murder, traffic fatalities, drug overdoses, and incarceration, while avoiding the high taxes paid by families for policing and prisons. Providing detailed examples, Irvin Waller offers specific actions our leaders at all levels can take to reduce violence and lower costs to taxpayers. He focuses on how to retool policing and improve corrections to reduce reoffending and crime, while limiting criminal courts. He also shows how programs and investments in various strategies can help those youth on the path to chronic offending avoid the path all together. Waller shows how to get smart on crime to shift the criminal justice paradigm from the failing, outdated, racially biased, and exorbitant complex today to an effective, modern, fair and lean system for safer communities that spares so many victims from the loss and pain of preventable violence. He makes a compelling case for reinvesting what is currently misspent on reacting to crime into smart ways to prevent crime. Ultimately, he demonstrates to readers the importance of reevaluating our current system and putting into place proven strategies for crime and violence prevention that will keep people out of jail and make our streets and communities safer for everyone.

Irvin Waller, PhD, is emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. He has a long history of being consulted on crime policy and victim rights by political leaders on every continent and by international organizations, including the European Union and the Inter-American Development Bank. His passion and knowledge have made him a featured speaker and media resource around the world in English, French and Spanish. Waller first addressed crime prevention and rights for crime victims in Burglary: The Victim and the Public (1978). This influenced his work as a senior official for the Canadian government where he was in charge of presenting research that led to the abolition of the death penalty, the control of firearms and first policies for victims of crime. It brought him into the small network of pioneers of the US and international movement to protect rights for victims of crime. His trail blazing work to get the UN General Assembly to recognize rights for victims earned him multiple awards, including from the US National Organization for Victim Assistance. This magna carta for victim rights is influencing advances across the world still today. In 1994, he became the founding director general of the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, established by Canada and France and affiliated with the UN. His leadership brought notoriety to the Centre and funding from the US Department of Justice, the British Home Office, and other governments in Europe. He was honored with the Captain of Crime Prevention Award by the Belgian Ministry of the Interior in 1996 and recognition from the Centre s supporting governments in 2000. He has served on task forces in South Africa (for the Mandela government), Canada and the USA and been recognized by Mexico in 2016 for his contributions to crime policy in Latin America. He has led the World Society of Victimology and the International Organization for Victim Assistance, both in special consultative status with ECOSOC. He has served on the board and advised international children's rights and urban safety organizations. He is the author of Smarter Crime Control: A Guide to a Safer Future for Citizens, Communities and Politicians (R&L, 2013), Rights for Victims of Crimes: Rebalancing Justice (R&L, 2010) and Less Law, More Order: The Truth about Reducing Crime (2006).