Books like Controlling Crime — picked by fans

Benson and Simpson use the opportunity perspective – assuming that crimes often depend on offenders recognizing an opportunity to commit an offense – to uncover the processes and situational conditions that induce white-collar crimes. 

They offer solutions to this persistent and widespread social problem, recognizing the difficulties of control.

The treatment is thoroughly researched and empirically supported. 

Cohen offers a comprehensive sweep of the financial and non-financial consequences of criminal behavior, crime prevention, and society’s response to crime, public and private.  

Crime costs are far-reaching, including medical costs, lost wages, property damage, pain and suffering, and reduced quality of life for victims and the public at large, as well as public expenditures on police, courts, and prisons, and the costs borne by offenders and their families, who often suffer consequences apart from the punishments they receive for committing crime. 

This book presents contrasting views on the privatization of policing: whether it is mostly a good thing, its downsides, and which aspects of policing lend themselves to privatization. 

Forst argues that a blend of public and private policing can provide a more equitable and efficient delivery of policing services than can public police alone.  

Manning, unfriendly to economics and management efficiency, takes a dramaturgical perspective, concluding that those paradigms are fundamentally at odds with the traditional policing mandate, which confers on the government a monopoly on the use of coercion. 

This book applies economic theory and econometric methods to problems in criminology.

It is divided into three parts. Part I discusses models of criminal recidivism. Part II describes the economic model of crime. Part III estimates cost functions for prisons.

Specific chapters cover statistical analysis of qualitative outcomes; analysis of two measures of criminal activity – the arrest rate and the conviction rate; and long-run estimates of cost functions for a group of Federal Correctional Institutions. 

This book approaches profit improvement primarily from the cost side. Numerous practical methods and tricks are explained. If these are successfully implemented in real business, significant profit improvements will result in a short time (hence the six months or less!). But these methods are not without risks, because if you treat stakeholders such as suppliers, banks, and employees too harshly, this can lead to negative reactions. The same is true for competitors if you play too hard. Therefore the judgment of one reviewer should be observed: Useful if applied with common sense, but dangerous in the wrong hands.

Schneier’s book taught me that hacking isn’t just something that occasionally happens to your laptop. The powerful hack the laws that govern our society too.

I wondered how the hacking mindset could apply to enhancement techs. Which enhancement techs will the elite reserve for themselves and which might they impose on the gig workers of the future? Suppose Neuralink does manage to get its tech into our heads. Imagine Musk finds himself just short of the funds needed to found his planned Martian city. Might beneficiaries of his brain-computer interfaces find themselves abruptly subject to overpowering urges to immediately own ten Teslas? This sounds absurd.

Perhaps the right question to ask is how crazy it is relative to cities of a million on Mars by 2050. Is it beyond the reach of Musk’s rule-breaking, can-do imagination?

For anyone interested in a comfortable tour through some of the greatest economists, this book is a must-read.

It is like having a personal conversation with the world's leading economic masterminds, as it explores their beliefs, backgrounds, and legacies. This book is well-written and easy to follow, making it an excellent choice for anyone.

Economics is not only concerned with fiscal policies and national economies. And this book does a good job of illustrating the fact that Economics plays a role in almost every aspect of human life.

Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the inclusion of Daniel Kahneman in the book, an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel Prize winner whose empirical findings challenged the assumption of human rationality, i.e. the foundation of modern Economics.

Eminently readable, this is a classic book by the doyen of American health economics that explains in non-technical terms the economics of health and medical care. It has been updated with several essays that Fuchs has published in the almost five decades since the book was first published.  

I became well acquainted with Economics after my undergraduate studies, and found this book to be an excellent resource.

It begins with the ancient Greeks and culminates in the modern era. It elaborates upon crucial issues such as money, markets, prices, and production. What sets it apart from others is its focus on the evolution of economic ideas, rather than the economists themselves.

Backhouse's writing style is clear and accessible, and makes even complex concepts understandable. One thing I appreciate is that Backhouse demonstrates that no economic theory emerges "out of nowhere" as is often implied, rather it builds on its predecessors.

This book offers insights that have stayed with me long after reading, and I still refer to it for its depth of knowledge.

We were impressed by how Hyman digs deep into the ethical dilemmas and the staggering amount of money generated by the industry, which now requires families to spend large sums of money annually to have their children participate in youth sports.

He clearly demonstrates how hugely profitable businesses have very little concern about whether the products they use in the youth sports industry actually serve their youth target audience well.