Major tenets of the conservative crime control agenda are critically examined, including policies aimed at increased use of incarceration through preventive detention, incapacitation, and mandatory sentencing; deterrent effects of capital punishment and crackdowns on drunk driving; law enforcement strategies such as removing procedural restraints, improving detective work, and increasing police manpower, closing loopholes by restricting appeals, abolishing plea bargaining, and focusing on the prosecution of career criminals; and protecting victims. Gun control issues, laws, and proposals also are discussed. The liberal prescription for reform is reviewed including rehabilitative schemes emphasizing diversion, probation and parole, and prison reform. Liberal proposals to reform the law (through decriminalization), the system, and society are evaluated. It is suggested that most crime control proposals are nonsense and that both liberals and conservatives are guilty of peddling nonsense. Most proposals have little or no effect on crime. Of policies, those most likely to be effective include gun control, probation, and enhancing principles of due process that will enhance the quality of justice. Chapter figures, tables, illustrations, and notes and an index.