Statistics are tricky. For every statistic designed to enlighten,
there is a statistic designed to mislead. The problem for the American
public is to distinguish tricky statistics from accurate statistics.
This section is designed to help people to understand how crime rates
are measured so they can draw their own conclusions from statements in
the news.
There are two major methods of measuring crime in America: the
National Crime Victimization Survey and the F.B.I. Uniform Crime
Reports. These measurements often yield different results. The Bureau of
Justice Statistics has some information on the Nation's
Two Measures of Crime.
The National Crime Survey (NCS) is considered
more accurate by criminologists. The NCS is a telephone poll conducted
in the same manner as professional market surveys. A representative
sample of households are telephoned and asked questions such as: Were
you the victim of a crime last year? What was the crime? Did you report
it to the police?
Because it is a survey based on a sample, there is
no information about crime in geographic regions (states, cities, etc).
But it does help identify how much crime goes unreported to police and
recent changes in the questionnaire and interview procedures have made
it a better measure of domestic violence and sexual assault.
The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are tabulated by the FBI on
the basis of arrest reports from local police departments nationwide.
Criminologists view these statistics with suspicion because they are
related to local police practices, so computerization of record keeping,
pro-arrest policies, or emphasizing informal resolutions can affect the
'crime rate' but affecting the number of reports about crime. Even the
UCR documentation indicates it is as much a measure of police behavior
than
'crime.'
In addition, police records cannot be compared across jurisdictions.
Police departments that pursue aggressive arrest policies or that keep
careful records of arrests will appear to have more crime than
departments that reserve arrests for serious crimes or that devote less
attention to paperwork- even if both districts have the same amount of
crime.
The chief exception is homicide, a crime that is so serious it is
virtually always reported by civilians and virtually always recorded
carefully by the police. Thus, the UCR measures homicide more reliably
than it measures other crimes.
Arrests are one of the worst sources of measuring crime rates
because they are so intimately linked with police department practices.
One department may choose an aggressive arrest strategy, while another
department may choose to reserve arrest for serious offenses. One
department may choose to arrest on any degree of suspicion, another
department may choose not to arrest unless the suspicion is confirmed,
corroborated, or of extremely high quality. One department may be
overstaffed, another may be understaffed. All of these variables will
produce different arrest rates. By and large, arrest rates have
increased in recent years as police departments have grown, but this
does not necessarily indicate higher crime.
How to manipulate crime rates: Politicians manipulate crime
rate statistics by choosing their measures and choosing their years.
Sometimes to justify larger budgets and more money, police or
politicians need to show there's a 'crime problem,' and want to present
high numbers for crime. At other times, they need to demonstrate that
their policies are effective at reducing crime, so they want to present
lower numbers.
If you want to show that crime went up, use the UCR because the
improvements in record keeping make it look like crime increased through
to about 1990. If you
want to show really huge increases, use 1960 as a baseline year because
the baby boomers were still babies and police record keeping was
incomplete.
If you want to make it look like crime went down, use a relatively
high crime year like 1980 or 1990 and compare it to a relatively low crime year. Or
put a crime like burglary into the trend, because it consistently
decreased through the 1980s.
FAQ
on UCR from FBI.gov. William Chambliss' book Power,
Politics and Crime (2000) offers a very critical look at the
manipulation of crime rate statistics.
There are 11.5 million admissions to prison or jail annually.
(FBI). Every year, more people are arrested than the entire combined
populations of our 13 least populous states.
America incarcerates five times as many people per capita as
Canada and 7 times as many as most European democracies; the U.S.
has the highest incarceration rate in the world, indicating we are
not 'soft on crime.' (See World
Prison Brief, International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings
College, London)
America spends approximately 200 billion dollars a year on the
criminal justice system, up from 12 billion in 1972. (Dept
of Justice Current CJ Expenditures). Please keep in mind these
underestimate the full cost of CJ because some costs like prison
construction are counted as capital expenditures under a different
budget from CJ.
With 2.2 million people engaged in catching
criminals and putting and keeping them behind bars,
"corrections" has become one of the largest sectors of the
U.S. economy, employing more people than the combined workforces of
General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three biggest corporate
employers in the country. [America's Prison Habit,
by Alan Elsner, Washington Post 24 January 2004; Page A19]
Q: Is our system so big because we have so much crime?
A: No.
America's overall crime rates are similar to comparable nations.
For the crime of assault, 2.2% of Americans are victimized each
year, compared to 2.3% of Canadians and 2.8% of Australians. For car
theft, the U.S. rate is 2.3%, Australia is at 2.7% and England is at
2.8%.
America is extraordinary only in its rate of homicide with
guns - lethal violence.
American gun homicide rates run twenty times the rate in comparable
nations- causing Americans to live in fear that their counterparts
in England and France do not share.
Q: Why is the system so big if not because of high crime?
A: Because of our exceedingly harsh treatment of lesser crimes
We quadrupled the prison population since 1980, but
much of the
increase in admissions involved non-violent offenses, especially
drugs.
The system is so big because America punishes lesser offenses so
frequently and so severely. Other nations reserve prison for serious
or violent offenders. America sends millions of people to jail every
year for minor crimes like trespassing, disorderly conduct, non-DWI
traffic offenses, and simple possession of small amounts of illegal
drugs for personal use.
88% of offenses nationwide are non-violent. Only 3% of all crime
results in an injury. Homicide arrests constitute just 0.2% of all
arrests in America. (FBI -
UCR, section 2).
Violent crime does not drive our criminal justice system, the war
on drugs does. Other nations keep their justice systems under
control by handling drug addiction as a social and medical problem,
not a criminal justice problem.
In the federal prison system, one in five prisoners is a
"low-level drug law violator," defined as
"non-violent offenders with minimal or no prior criminal
history, whose offense did not involve sophisticated criminal
activity and who otherwise did not present negative characteristics
which would preclude consideration for sentence modification." The full federal tax burden of four
average families is needed to for each such prisoner. See The
Sentencing Project (Issues or Publications; take a look at the
Fact Sheets)
"Chief Justice William Rehnquist isn't exactly soft on crime. So when he takes the uncommon step of publicly opposing a bill aimed at lengthening prison sentences, you'd expect Congress to pay attention. Instead, both the House and the Senate have voted overwhelmingly for legislation that threatens to strip federal judges of much of their discretion to give prison terms shorter than those in the federal sentencing guidelines.
"Attached as an amendment to the "Amber Alert" bill, a popular measure establishing a nationwide system to locate missing children, the changes passed with only 25 dissenting votes in the House and none in the Senate. Last week, President Bush signed the bill into law. So much for the chief justice, who was essentially ignored when he warned that the bill "would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and responsible sentences."
"Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said today that prison terms are too long and that he favors scrapping the practice of setting mandatory minimum sentences for some federal crimes.
"'Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too
long,' Kennedy said in remarks prepared for delivery to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association.
Prisons are part of a comprehensive crime-fighting regime, but
they are only a small component. Excessive reliance on prisons
brings little additional safety. Imprisonment occurs long after the
crime has been committed and mostly incapacitates an offender from
committing more crimes against people on the outside. It does not
prevent crime and inmates frequently come out of prison worse than
they went in, with few additional skills or pro-social
behavior.
Overall, high rates of incarceration have little or no correlation
to rates of crime. States with high rates of incarceration may or
may not have high rates of crime. States with low rates of crime may
or may not have high rates of incarceration. Similarly, states that
embark on massive prison construction programs may or may not show
declines in crime.
Most people admitted to prison or jail serve short sentences for
minor crimes. The sentence does little to effect the underlying
reasons for the criminal behavior- so little prevents them from
reverting to the same behavior after release.
A person in prison cannot commit crimes in the street, but
somebody else is usually willing to take the incarcerated person's
place on the street (a replacement effect) - especially in the context of drug crimes. When
people are released (usually a few years later), they are often
worse off for the experience of having been in prison, which makes
the streets less safe.
The best that can be said is that the enormous increase in law
enforcement caused a marginal decrease in crime. The worst that can
be said is that the expansion did nothing for crime but caused
terrible collateral harm on society by draining money and ruining
lives. Indeed, states cut money for crime prevention and education
to build prisons, a non-sustainable policy akin to mopping
the floor while the tub overflows.
Lynch
and Sabol, Prison use and Social Control
discusses in more detail research examining how mass incarceration
undermines informal social controls (family and community); it has a
discussion of incarceration effects, models of weakened informal social
control processes, and a review of empirical evidence.
Q: Are there racial disparities in the criminal justice system?
A: Yes.
Relative to their populations, there are seven times as many
minorities in prison as whites. (BJS).
Nationwide, one in three young black men is under the supervision
of the criminal justice system. (Mauer). In many cities, half the
young black are under the control of the criminal justice system. In
Baltimore the figure is 56%; in D.C. it is 42%. (NCIA). In a single
year in Los Angeles, one third of the young African American men
spend time behind bars. (NCCD).
By the time they reach the age of 35, nearly eight in ten black
men can expect to have been arrested, making arrest one of the
unifying experiences of the entire generation.
Rates of offending are higher in impoverished minority
communities, but not high enough to explain the disparity. Racial
disparities are better explained by disparate enforcement practices.
African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of
the drug using population, but an astonishing 74% of the people sent
to prison for drug possession. (BJS).
In Baltimore, 11,107 of the 12,965 persons arrested for "drug
abuse offenses" in 1991 were African Americans. (NCIA). In a
crack sweep in Baltimore in the spring of 1996, all of the people
arrested were black. White people found smoking crack were warned
and sent home.
Rates of offending in middle class minority communities are the
same as the general population.
As minorities move through the system, they encounter slightly
harsher treatment at every step. Marginal disparities at arrest are
combined with marginal disparities at the bail decision, the
charging decision, the verdict and the sentence - by the end of the
process, the disparity is considerable.
Involvement in the system starts a vicious cycle. A person
arrested once is branded an ex-offender for life. The person is
pointed to as an example of how many people in the neighborhood are
bad, or how many are repeat offenders. Having a criminal record also
makes it more difficult to find a job.
Q: Is it true that nothing works to prevent crime?
A: Absolutely not.
Decades of experimentation have led to positive model solutions to
most problems relating to crime and violence. There is no absence of
knowledge. All we need to do is invest in what works.
Scientifically evaluated programs have been proven to reduce:
crime, gang-related behavior, welfare dependency, teen pregnancy,
school drop-outs, school violence, drug use and family abuse. Other
scientifically evaluated programs have been proven to increase:
employability, parenting skills, family stability and economic
opportunity.
The common elements that underlie successful initiatives,
particularly initiatives organized at the grassroots, are: after
school recreational programs where kids get mentoring, social
support and discipline; educational innovations that motivate
children to stay in school; job training carefully linked to job
creation; problem-oriented, community based policing; well-designed
therapeutic interventions for people with mental health difficulties
and drug addictions; and involvement of parents, caretakers and
entire communities.
Most successful community initiatives cost far less than prison
construction and operation. The great obstacles tend to be political
will and the tendency for the entire crime-control budget to be
spent on the apparatus of law enforcement rather than to support
community initiatives. We need to broaden our definition of
"crime fighting" to incorporate more means to improve
public safety.
Q: Can you give examples of successful programs?
A: Yes But most successful programs are small, neighborhood initiatives.
The best place to look for models is your own community.
Early childhood development: The Head Start program returns about
$7 in benefits for every dollar invested. Children born in poverty
who attended a Head Start preschool program have half as many
criminal arrests, less likelihood of going to jail, higher earnings
and property wealth, and a greater commitment to family than
similarly situated people who did not attend a program. (Perry
Preschool).
Drug treatment: A comprehensive study of drug treatment in
California found that every dollar spent on substance abuse
treatment saved taxpayers over seven dollars in reduced crime and
health care costs. The study also found that the level of criminal
activity by program participants decreased by 66% following
treatment; the number of crimes involving a weapon or physical force
decreased by 71%. Yet while 75% of men in California prisons have a
history of drug use, only 10% are involved in a drug treatment
program. Current capacity of drug treatment facilities nationwide is
inadequate to handle the need for treatment.
Recreation: Teenagers will find ways to entertain themselves-- by
breaking windows and drinking liquor if not by playing ball. Parks
and recreational opportunities like Midnight Basketball are proven
effective at reducing crime. When a pilot program in Arizona kept
basketball courts open until 2 a.m., juvenile crime decreased by as
much as 50%. The cost of the program was 60 cents per person.
Gang-Prevention: Kids often turn to gangs because of the absence
of pro-social recreational alternatives. Communities concerned about
gangs need to develop sports leagues, after-school activities,
church events, mentoring programs or other positive alternatives to
gang membership.
Education: Education is the route to decent jobs and out of crime.
In 1991, for the first time in U.S. history, cities spent more on
law enforcement than education. Jurisdictions around the country are
cutting education budgets because they lack sufficient funds while
unquestioningly setting aside huge sums for law enforcement. Schools
that engage parents or caretakers in troubled communities show
excellent results. A 1996 Rand Corporation study showed that a high
school graduation incentive program would prevent five times as many
crimes as California's "Three-Strikes-You're-Out" law.
Special curricula: The Educational Development Center in Boston
has developed curricula designed to teach school children how to
settle conflicts without violence. Other schools in Boston followed
the state Attorney General's lead in creating peer mediation squads
to help headstrong teens find their way out of disputes.
Job Training: Vocational training for adolescents and dislocated
workers can help reduce crime by enhancing employment opportunities.
The Labor Market: Job training is useless if there are no jobs. We
must make a national commitment to genuine full employment in all
communities.
See gernerally, Blueprints for Violence Prevention.
The Blueprints project was developed by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado–Boulder and is supported by
Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (U.S. Dept of
Justice). It has evolved into a large-scale prevention initiative, both identifying model programs and providing technical support to help sites choose and implement programs with a high degree of integrity. After reviewing more than 600 violence prevention programs, the Blueprints initiative has identified 11 model programs and 21 promising programs that prevent violence and drug use and treat youth with problem behaviors.
Q: How should we punish somebody who committed a crime?
A: Reserve prison for serious offenders and place lesser offenders in
community corrections.
There are effective non-custodial ways to punish marginal
offenders. Intensive probation, drug rehabilitation and community
service are just a few of the options. Many of these options are
much less expensive than prison and more effective at reducing
recidivism. Continuum
of Options chart
If just half of the non-violent prisoners were not incarcerated,
about $8 billion would be saved annually on custodial operating
costs alone. This money could be used to fund less expensive
punishment and prevention programs that in the long run can prevent
crime with fewer negative collateral effects on communities.
Under this scenario, the savings generated each year for crime
prevention significantly exceeds all the money the 1994 federal
crime control act allocates to crime prevention over six years.
If an addict or occasional drug user is convicted of simple
possession of a small amount of a controlled substance and sentenced
to a five year mandatory minimum sentence, the cost to the public of
prison alone is $110,000.
For the same amount of money, society could: give the offender one
year of prison ($22,000), one year of residential drug treatment
($15,000), and three years of supervised probation and outpatient
drug treatment ($3,500 per year), and still have $62,500 left over
for savings or other civic investment.
Community corrections help transform people who commit crimes into
productive members of society. People who live in the community must
care for themselves and find work in the manner of ordinary
citizens. People behind bars are less responsible for themselves.
The small number of people who need to be locked up should be
afforded every opportunity to improve themselves. The loss of
liberty is the punishment. While incarcerated, they should work, get
educated, undergo drug treatment, and everything else necessary so
that society will not regret their release.
People look to the criminal justice system for personal security.
They are rightly concerned about crime and they want to be safe.
Unquestioning reliance on the system, however, creates problems of
its own. The state run bureaucracy of justice consumes billions of
tax dollars every year, responds poorly to victims' needs, and
resists every effort at reform. In some neighborhoods, the apparatus
of justice actually causes more problems than it solves.
The oversized criminal justice system siphons money that could
better be spent on other civic endeavors. The nation spends $100
billion every year on crime control. Spending on corrections at the
state level has increased faster than any other spending category.
While new prisons are being built, schools are crumbling, highways
are growing potholed, parks are left to decay, and
opportunity-generating programs are being cut. These conditions
breed crime in the long run (see mopping
the floor while the tub overflows).
In 1980, 3% of the California state budget went to prisons while
18% went to higher education. In 1994, 8% went to prisons and 8%
went to education. Between 1994 and 1995, the overrun in state
corrections spending (11.1% actual increase compared to 7.1%
budgeted increase) exceeded the entire increase in higher education
(2.3%). (NCJC).
In many inner city neighborhoods, half of the young men are under
government supervision. In the District of Columbia, nearly 15% of
the young men are locked up. Young women cannot find mates, children
cannot see parents, and young men cannot develop careers. The high
rates of involvement are not caused by serious violent crimes, but
by lesser crimes, often involving noise or drugs. Prosecuting and
imprisoning such people in such high numbers destabilizes
communities and robs them of human and financial resources.
Approximately 80% of the young black men under age 35 have a
criminal record. Having a record makes it harder to find work, and
makes it impossible to get many kinds of professional licenses. A
young man arrested for disorderly conduct may be unable to become a
bus driver or a barber ten years later because his record violates
licensure requirements.
Lynch
and Sabol, Prison use and Social Control
discusses in more detail research examining how mass incarceration
undermines informal social controls (family and community); it has a
discussion of incarceration effects, models of weakened informal social
control processes, and a review of empirical evidence.
* Most states with three strikes laws rarely used them—the exception being California, which “struck-out” more offenders than the 20 other states with similar laws combined.
* The majority of people incarcerated under three strikes laws are non-violent offenders.
* States without three strikes laws actually saw greater decreases in violent crimes than those with three strikes laws.
Most crime is local. Kids make too much noise, individuals suffer
from drug addictions, dealers convert a vacant property into a crack
house, and convenience stores lose inventory to shoplifters. The
solutions to such problems are also local: parks and community
gardens so kids have something positive to do with their time, drug
treatment facilities, neighborhood patrols, and sentences that
require shoplifters to sweep the sidewalks in the business district.
These innovative, small scale approaches to crime control are best
designed and implemented by people closest to the problem.
The very best crime control arises from informal neighborhood
relations. Crime thrives when people are indoors and afraid. A
healthy neighborhood is one where people walk outdoors and neighbors
watch each other's homes. Big government solutions like prison
projects do little to foster such conditions.
The best role for the government is to promote problem-solving,
community oriented policing, and to free public moneys to support
small scale projects. Investing millions in a new prison does not do
as much good for public safety as investing thousands in drug
treatment facilities or job training programs.
If the government cannot help, it should at least not interfere in
neighborhoods trying to solve their own problems. Unfortunately, big
government interventions like mass arrests and prison construction
often do more harm than good.
The mass media plays a substantial role in blowing crime fear out
of proportion. TV crime coverage is one of the biggest reasons that
people who live in neighborhoods with virtually zero street crime
report that crime is a number one concern.
Between 1992 and 1993, major network evening news coverage of
homicide tripled, even though the homicide rate went down.
In 1980 there were no major network "true crime"
television shows. Now there is such a show almost every night.
(America's Most Wanted, Top Cops, American Detective, Unsolved
Mysteries, etc.).
When local news wants an easy story, it goes to the local police
station and finds out what happened that day. When national news
wants to excite viewers, it scours the nation for the day's most
titillating crime, and broadcasts it everywhere. The result is a
popular sense that rare and extreme crimes happen around every
corner.
Psychological and public opinion research shows that heavy viewers
of television feel that their own lives are under siege. Heavy
viewers exhibit exaggerated fears of victimization and a perception
that people cannot be trusted; they are more likely to buy
anti-crime devices such as locks and guns, and more likely to
support punitive crime policies. (Gerbner, Carlson, NCJC).
Some stations are seeking alternatives. KVUE television in Texas,
for example, found its viewers frustrated with repetitive coverage
of trivial crime news. The station adopted criteria for crime
coverage and excluded crimes that were not nationally important or
did not have local consequences. The choice freed air time for
coverage of more important events.
It's an election year. Politicians at every level, from U.S.
President to the county dog catcher, are posturing for voters. Crime
is an easy political issue because everybody is against it and
nobody is for it. Unlike health care or deficit reduction, which
bring out powerful constituencies on all sides, crime control is one
dimensional. Politicians compete to act most "tough"
regardless of the sensibility of the policy. As a result, they often
overlook cheaper, more effective, less eye- catching policies.
Posturing on crime puts a special burden on the citizenry. This is
a democracy. Posturing politicians won't be elected if the citizens
demand substance over soundbites. To get fuller information, try
asking the following questions:
How much will the policy cost? How will it be paid for? Will taxes
be raised? What programs will be cut?
Is it necessary to build a new prison or jail? Have you explored
all options? Have you considered community sanctions for non-
violent offenses?
How will you pay for that prison? Will you raise taxes? What
program will you cut? Will you borrow money, and if so, at what
interest rate?
Who will fill the new prison or jail? Are they murderers and
rapists, or lesser offenders like drug addicts and noisy kids? Can
drug addicts and noisy kids be held accountable for their behavior
without sending them to jail? Be sure to get the statistics!
Can everybody in this district who wants drug treatment get it? If
not, why not? Do we need more treatment programs? Should we start a
drug court?
Are there adequate recreational opportunities for kids? Are there
sports leagues, after school programs, parks? What can teenagers do
for fun that also keeps them out of trouble?
If you are worried about teen violence, have you considered peer
mediation and anti-violence curricula for the schools?
If you are worried about domestic abuse, are there sufficient
battered women's shelters and domestic counselors in the district?
Do the shelters take children?
If you are worried about victims, have you made sure they are
treated respectfully by police and prosecutors? Are they informed of
court dates? Do they get restitution? When their property is used
for evidence, is it returned in a timely manner?
What is the racial mix of people currently being entered into the
justice system? How will the mix change if the new policy is
enacted? If I were a member of the racial group most affected, would
I feel unfairly singled out?
Stop relying on prisons as the primary response to criminal
behavior. Impose a three year moratorium on new prison construction
pending proof that additional capacity is needed to confine serious
or repeat offenders.
It costs $100,000 to build a new prison cell, $200,000 over 25
years to pay interest on the construction debt, and $22,000 a year to
operate the cell. The nation has tripled its prison population since
1980, opening the equivalent of 3 new 500 bed prisons every week, but
most of the increase in prison admissions were for non-violent
offenses.
Develop intermediate sanctions to punish people who commit lesser
offenses; focus on community service and restitution so that
offenders give something back to the victim and the community.
Somebody convicted of shoplifting should be sentenced to sweep
sidewalks in the business district for six months; somebody convicted
of vandalism should be sentenced to cleaning parks and scrubbing signs
for a year. Fines, electronic monitoring and intensive probation all
cost less than prison and have lower rates of recidivism.
Replace the war on drugs with a policy of harm reduction, in which
the police work with public health professionals to stem illegal
drug use.
Drug use itself is less of a problem than the issues associated
with drug use: gang violence, ruined families, squalid neighborhoods,
spread of AIDS. Treatment facilities and therapeutic interventions can
go far to reduce the demand for illegal drugs; needle exchange
programs and enforcement of gun laws can go far to reduce the harm
associated with drug use. A California study found that every dollar
spent on drug treatment saved seven dollars in other social costs.
Balance criminal justice spending with spending on other civic
activities such as education and recreation.
Night time basketball programs have been associated with fifty
percent reductions in juvenile crime. Education is the path to better
jobs and away from crime, and high school anti-violence curricula help
hotheaded teens to resolve their conflicts without gunfire.
Nonetheless, education and recreation spending has been hard hit by
demands for new corrections spending. Jurisdictions may consider
fiscal impact statements that require every new criminal justice
initiative to explain how much it will cost and how it will be paid
for.
Restore the internal balance of the system so that judges have
more discretion at sentencing and prosecutors are confined by an
adversary system of checks and balances.
Rigid rules like mandatory sentencing laws have transferred power
from neutral judges to partisan prosecutors, and impaired judge's
flexibility to make the punishment fit the offense and the offender.
Prosecutor budgets also exceed defense budgets by more than four
times- so our adversarial system of justice is becoming a one-sided
game.
The bureaucracy of justice entangles victims. Victims often fail
to receive restitution, notice of court dates or even respectful
treatment. Victims should be made to feel whole, not angry, by the
justice process. The justice process should also explore policies
designed to prevent people from being victimized in the first place.
Criminal justice policy should be made on the basis of quality
information- not outdated research, not myth, and not sensational
anecdotes.
Official justice data is usually three years old on the date it is
published. Though much of the data is useful and important, some is
presented in a manner designed to support the policies of parties in
power. The media should treat government data sources (like police and
prosecutors) as sources of the government position, not necessarily
neutral dispensers of information. The media should also resist the
urge to sensationalize: between 1992 and 1993 the major network news
coverage of homicide tripled, though homicide went down several
percent. Not surprisingly, the American public thought homicide had
increased and called for policies accordingly.
Recognize that crime is a multi-dimensional issue and welcome
solutions that do not stem from law enforcement officials. All
levels of government should create crime prevention councils to
develop a coordinated anti-crime strategy.
Repeat violent offenders do not fall from the sky. We see them
when they are three years old in the child neglect system and five
years old in the foster care system; we see them at eight years old as
the neighborhood bully, twelve years old as habitual truants, fifteen
years old as a vandals, eighteen years old in the unemployment office,
twenty year olds in the emergency room suffering from stab wounds, and
finally, at age twenty five, in custody for a serious crime. The
individual's responsibility for their own choices does not relieve us
all of responsibility for failing at every stage to help direct the
person towards a better life. Councils should include police,
prosecutors, educators, social service professionals, public health
specialists, child welfare officials, church groups, crime victims,
neighborhood associations, and anyone else willing to reflect on how
to improve neighborhood safety and quality of life.
Pass gun control legislation at the federal level. Stringent gun
control legislation will not reduce violence, but it will reduce its
harmful effects.
In 1992, Americans owned 212 million guns. A gun is made in
America every ten seconds and another gun is imported every eleven
seconds. Rates of gun ownership in the United States run about twenty
times the rate in comparable nations- and so do the rates of homicide.
In 1993, more than five times as many victims died from firearms than
knives, the second most deadly weapon. It is much easier to kill with
a gun than by any other means, and the presence of a gun can turn
heated arguments into homicides. Federal legislation prevents guns
from moving between jurisdictions with different laws.
Recognize the relationship between poverty, economic inequality
and crime, and make a national effort to reduce the conditions in
which crime most easily takes root.
The poorest neighborhoods have the highest crime- the statistics
show it and anyone who avoids those neighborhoods at night will
confirm it. Just half of prison inmates held full time jobs prior to
their incarceration, and only a quarter had graduated from high
school. Economic opportunity and jobs that pay a living wage remain
key ingredients to reducing crime.
Eliminate racial bias and reduce racial disparity within the
justice system.
African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of
the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison
for drug possession. Minorities are subject to disparate treatment at
arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every
other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so
that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their
rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American
communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the
disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the
entire nation.
Shift from an agenda of "war" to an agenda of
"peace."
Americans should stop talking of a "war" on drugs and a
"war" on crime. A war against the American people is a war
nobody can win; it brings hostility and division, exhausts our
resources and saps our moral strength. We should shift to an agenda of
peace and seek terms for a lasting reconciliation: build parks, invest
in job creation, share concerns and find a way for all Americans to
build a safer society.
See also: Justice Reinvestment
- To Invest in Public Safety by Reallocating Justice Dollars to Refinance Education, Housing, Healthcare, and Jobs.
More than $54 billion is spent annually on prisons in the United States, much of it directed toward incarcerating people for non-violent drug offenses with little or no hope of access to rehabilitation services. In the November 2003 issue of Ideas for an Open Society, Susan Tucker and Eric Cadora argue that the nation's dependence on mass incarceration reflects an approach to imprisonment that actually sacrifices public safety. They contend that the appropriate strategy to address this situation is to reallocate funding throughout the U.S. criminal justice system toward education, housing, health care, and jobs—all priority areas that can directly influence crime rates.
