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Crime is a product of social excess.

Anti-social behaviour still blights lives, wrecks communities and provides a pathway to criminality.

I think that crime is a good vehicle for looking at society in general because the nature of the crime novel means that you draw on a wide group of social possibilities.

Given the devastation that crime can visit on families and communities, I will err on being a little too tough on crime than being too soft on crime.

I could have easily been a statistic. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was easy - a little too easy - to get into trouble. Surrounded by poor schools, lack of resources, high unemployment rates, poverty, gangs and more, I watched as many of my peers fell victim to a vicious cycle of diminished opportunities and imprisonment.

The causes of crime are very complicated. But there is a very big literature, as you know, about single parenthood in crime, about race in crime, and about poverty in crime.

When it comes to social consequences, they've got all different people acting in different ways, very difficult to even have a proper criterion of success. So, it's a difficult task.

I realized crime isn't the only way you can judge people. People can do good things, and people can do bad things. It's probably better to understand people for the good things they do.

We can't just rail against crime. We must speak of the root problems - devastating family breakup, an insidious culture of violence that cheapens human life, skyrocketing prisoner recidivism rates that rob our communities of husbands and fathers - and recognize that there is a societal role in rehabilitation and restoration.