Mark Kleiman grew up in Baltimore, but the city didn’t get him hooked on crime policy. “Ask any criminologist, and the best predictor of whether a kid will get into drugs is if older people he respects get him into them. It’s about bad companions,” Kleiman, a UCLA professor explained. “My bad companion was Phil Heymann.” Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor, hired Kleiman and his classmate Steve Hitchner to work on crime at the Department of Justice. Kleiman chatted with us before discussing some of the findings of his latest book, When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, which happens to be dedicated to Heymann and Hitchner. Read on to learn more about him.

Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. In the car, there was “All Things Considered,” featuring a woman who plays the shofar in synagogue, who is also a jazz trumpeter. So I got to hear “Taps” on the shofar. Then I switched to a CD of English Renaissance music by Canadian Brass.

Q. What is your favorite word?
A. Logos.

Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. A senator.

Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. Gin and tonic hold the gin.

Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. Northern Italy.

Q. If you were about to be executed, what would you want for your final meal?
A. A disappearing potion.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Going with my family to watch the total eclipse.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. A piece of African sculpture from a group called the Lobi….It’s very dark, heavy wood. It’s plain, with a couple of rectangles and circles on it. At some level it’s the most abstract thing you ever saw, but it’s obviously a portrait of somebody. It’s not the fire god, it’s Joe down the street.

Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To lose weight, to exercise, and to stop procrastinating. I’ll get around to that tomorrow.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most want to meet for dinner?
A. Socrates or Lao Tzu.

Q. What was the last thing that inspired you?
A. The Fragments of Heraclitus.

To read about Kleiman’s lecture, click here.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.