A fitting tribute to the work of Mark Kleiman

A huge figure in the criminal justice reform and drug policy space passed away yesterday, and German Lopez at Vox put together this effective substantive tribute (with links) under the headline "Mark Kleiman, who changed the way we think about crime and drugs, has died at 68: RIP Mark Kleiman, one of our best criminal justice scholars and my friend."  Here is how it gets started:

Mark Kleiman, an intellectual giant in criminal justice and drug policy, died at 68 years old on Sunday due to complications from a kidney transplant, his sister confirmed.

Kleiman, who last worked as a public policy professor at New York University’s Marron Institute, was known for his imaginative approach to policy. He had a knack for breaking through simplified public debates and finding alternative answers to complex problems. As Stanford drug policy expert Keith Humphreys put it, Kleiman “was one of the most creative criminal policy experts of his generation.”

With marijuana legalization, for instance, Kleiman was known for rejecting what he described as a false choice between criminal prohibition and commercial legalization — arguing that there was a middle ground that would end prohibition while preventing the rise of “Big Marijuana,” an entity he, and other experts, feared will market pot irresponsibly just as the alcohol, tobacco, and opioid industries have.

Kleiman also helped research breakthrough approaches for tacking crime and drug misuse. His study with Angela Hawken on Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) program helped demonstrate the principles of “swift, certain, and fair” punishment — a concept that, when properly implemented, uses prison sentences much shorter than those we have today to deter people from criminal behavior, with high success rates. It suggested there was a policy approach that could lead to both less incarceration and less crime.