Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age - Couverture souple

Harcourt, Bernard E.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0226316149 ISBN 13 : 9780226316147

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 2006

Synopsis

From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And with the exception of racial profiling on our highways and streets, most people favor these methods because they believe they’re a more cost-effective way to fight crime.

In Against Prediction, Bernard E. Harcourt challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, he demonstrates, may in fact increase the overall amount of crime in society, depending on the relative responsiveness of the profiled populations to heightened security. They may also aggravate the difficulties that minorities already have obtaining work, education, and a better quality of life—thus perpetuating the pattern of criminal behavior. Ultimately, Harcourt shows how the perceived success of actuarial methods has begun to distort our very conception of just punishment and to obscure alternate visions of social order. In place of the actuarial, he proposes instead a turn to randomization in punishment and policing. The presumption, Harcourt concludes, should be against prediction.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Bernard E. Harcourt is Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the director of the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 2006
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0226316149
• ISBN 13: 9780226316147
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 344
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible