Domestic tranquility is roughly the same in spite of the increase in prison building. On the other hand, we haven't had an increase in justice. We have 25 percent of all our children, young children, living in poverty. We have the greatest inequality in terms of wealth and income and wages in the world. One of every three African-Americans is in prison, on probation or on parole at any one time, one out of every two in the city.
Cocaine is shorter, used by whites.
The result is our prisons are full disproportionately with minorities. Yet, at the same time, prison building has become a kind of economic development policy for communities which send lobbyists to Washington. Overall the National Academy of Sciences though says that the best you can say is the criminal justice response to violence is running in place. So neither a reduction in domestic tranquility, nor improvement in justice over 30 years rather than the short period of time. Lawrence Sherman, this report in many of its chapters is as much a critique of American society and American criminal justice as it is a report on violence, and violent crime.