by William Petrocelli
We were probably expecting just a simple, political-year biography, so Kamala Harris’s new book Smart on Crime comes as a pleasant surprise. This thoughtful book is almost a mini-criminology course, with discussions of neighborhood protection strategies, the impact of education on crime, the lingering effects of violence, and all sorts of provocative ideas.
![](http://images.booksite.com/img/ing_img/0908/9780811865289.gif)
Take, for example, Harris’ emphasis on fighting truancy.
“Our truancy and drop-out rate situation not only is an economic catastrophe, from the position of law enforcement it has literally deadly consequences, … After I took office and began to focus on truancy, I asked for a study of our murder profiles from 2004 to 2008. It turned out that 94 percent of San Francisco’s homicide victims under the age of twenty-five were high school dropouts. The demographics of the murderers are the same.”
This is a book well worth reading.
We were probably expecting just a simple, political-year biography, so Kamala Harris’s new book Smart on Crime comes as a pleasant surprise. This thoughtful book is almost a mini-criminology course, with discussions of neighborhood protection strategies, the impact of education on crime, the lingering effects of violence, and all sorts of provocative ideas.
![](http://images.booksite.com/img/ing_img/0908/9780811865289.gif)
Take, for example, Harris’ emphasis on fighting truancy.
“Our truancy and drop-out rate situation not only is an economic catastrophe, from the position of law enforcement it has literally deadly consequences, … After I took office and began to focus on truancy, I asked for a study of our murder profiles from 2004 to 2008. It turned out that 94 percent of San Francisco’s homicide victims under the age of twenty-five were high school dropouts. The demographics of the murderers are the same.”
This is a book well worth reading.