ABSTRACT
This chapter examines policy goals and policy tools, sketches out the dimensions of crime in America, and then evaluates efforts to reduce crime. These aspects are followed by a discussion of three important criminal justice issues: police and minorities, prison reform, and gun control. The use of drugs and the amount of drug-related crime also indicate a breakdown in social institutions. The case study examines what may be our changing views on how to deal with the problem of drugs in the United States. Prisons have become our nation's substitute for effective public policies on crime, drugs, mental illness, housing, poverty, and employment of the hardest to employ. The federal government does have an important role in the criminal justice system, with its parallel police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons and oversees what lower-level governments do.
