Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates on Tonight Show of a very special guest. His name is William R. Kelly. And he just wrote a book in August 15, 2021. The title of the book is the Crisis in America's Criminal Courts, Improving Criminal Justice Outcomes by Transforming Decision Making. And Mr. Kelly is a professor of sociology and director of the

Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research at the University of Texas at Austin.

He has taught and conducted research in criminology and criminal justice for over 25 years

and has published extensively on a variety of justice matters. And some of his other titles

are The Future of Crime and Punishment, Smart Policies for Reducing Crime and Saving Money,

published 2019, confronting underground justice, reinventing plea bargaining for effective

criminal justice reform, published 2018. Also from retribution to public safety,

disruptive innovation in American criminal justice, 2017. Also criminal justice at the crossroads,

transforming crime and punishment, 2015. And then also justice under pressure,

a comparison of recidivism patterns among four successive parolee cohorts.

That was published in 2012.

But again, we're going to talk about this book, The Crisis in America's Criminal Court.

There's been some changes under Trump.

We can talk about that and Mr. Kelly's position on how to improve criminal justice.

So Professor Kelly, are you there? I am. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, thanks for agreeing to the interview. For people who may not have heard your

background, can you talk about what led you to write this book, The Crisis in America's Criminal Courts?

I've been working in the area of criminal justice and criminology for about 30 years.

In the past 10 years, I've been focusing primarily on what's wrong with the criminal justice system

and more importantly, how do we fix it?

A lot of academics are quick to complain, but then they stop there.

My mission has been to gather as much of the evidence-based research on effective reforms

...