David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

criminals at the point that they become
less dangerous. Once again, what starts
out as a promising strategy stops
working.
Now for the crucial question: Is there
a right side to the crime-and-punishment
curve—a point where cracking down
starts to actually make things worse? The
criminologist who has made this
argument most persuasively is Todd
Clear, and his reasoning goes something
like this:
Prison has a direct effect on crime: it
puts a bad person behind bars, where he
can’t victimize anyone else. But it also
has an indirect effect on crime, in that it
affects all the people with whom that
criminal comes into contact. A very high