Scaling Up Crime Prevention and Justice

Abstract

Criminal justice is afflicted with enforcement swamping crises. Is a bigger criminal justice system the only answer? Are there better ways to scale up prevention and justice? Literatures on four system-capacity crises, selected for how different they are, show that there are collective efficacy strategies that can move from institution to institution to scale up justice and prevention. Substance abuse, corporate crime, war crime, and gendered violence are problems that the criminal justice system pretends to solve but barely touches. To subdue system-capacity crises, community participation in crime control must grow to become more than just an adjunct to state enforcement and in a way that transforms democratic citizenship. Gifts of scaled-up volunteerism are needed, but institutional responsibility for collective efficacy is more critical than individualized responsibility for self-efficacy. To tackle system capacity deficits, businesses, armies, schools, and social movements that include feminism, LGBTIQ rights, Indigenous rights, environmentalism, and restorative justice can be empowered to mobilize collective efficacy for domination reduction. A long march through societies’ institutions led by such movements can achieve macro transformation in the scale of justice and prevention. Concrete collective efficacy strategies can be developed.