Daring to Fail

The winner of the 2010 PASS Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Daring to Fail is a collection of interviews with leaders in a variety of fields—prosecution, policing, community corrections, indigent defense and others—about leadership, management and innovation. Quotations from four of the interviews in the book are below.

Failure comes with lessons learned, yet those lessons are held pretty selfishly because there’s no platform for them to be shared.
— Tim Murray, former executive director, Pretrial Justice Institute

We tend to only look at failure in times of crisis, such as when a parolee commits a heinous crime.  But paying attention in times of calm is when it’s most valuable.
— Bill Bratton, former police chief, New York City, Boston and Los Angeles

There’s a long history of over-promising and under-delivering that has contributed to the constant pendulum swings in punishment practices.
— Joan Petersilia, professor, Stanford Law School

I don’t see anyone out there saying, ‘We tried this, it didn’t really work out, but here’s what we learned.'
— R. Gil Kerlikowske, director, Office of National Drug Control Policy