Why does Michael Chertoff still have a job?
Belle Waring at Crooked Timber sums it up nicely: Last week there was a pop quiz on homeland security, and Michael Chertoff failed. So why does he still have his job?
As Voltaire once said, the English find it advisable to hang an admiral from time to time, pour encourager les autres. Failure in important public jobs needs to have consequences for those who fail, because their failure has consequences for the rest of us.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman