In delivering the first annual Barrock Lecture on Criminal Law yesterday, Yale Professor Tracey Meares set a high bar for future speakers.  (A webcast is available here, and a written version will appear in the summer issue of the Marquette Law Review.)  Tracey’s talk was a call for police to move from an emphasis on deterring crime through the threat of harsh punishment to a more holistic approach to crime control that includes promoting more positive attitudes towards the law and legal authorities.  She identified procedural justice — basically, treating people with fairness and respect — as an important component of the more holistic strategy.  Her particular concern lies with crime and policing in inner-city, minority neighborhoods, where punishment-alone approaches have resulted in shockingly high incarceration rates among young, poorly educated, African-American men.  Tracey argues that an approach combining punishment with procedural justice offers better prospects for reducing crime and improving the quality of life in these difficult environments, and points to her own work with Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago as an example of the violence-reduction that can be accomplished when the police engage with the community in new ways.

I recently made a similar argument that the same sorts of benefits might be derived from prosecutors paying more attention to procedural justice in plea bargaining.  (A copy of my article is available here.) 

As Tracey indicated in her talk, there is plenty of evidence indicating that deterrence has limited value as a crime-control strategy.