For more than two decades, the United States has been at war with street crime, but we have precious little to show for it. Our obsession with punishment at the expense of, indeed to the exclusion of, prevention is not just futile but criminogenic and divisive. This article explains what is problematic about our indiscriminately punitive response to street crime and explores the political forces driving these self-defeating policies. What emerges is an understanding of the politics of street crime that is rooted less in the fear of crime than in a variety of anxieties that transcend street crime but are affectively related to it. Criminals provide a convenient target for the anger that is widely felt, but is not quite appropriate to express, with respect to unwelcome changes in race relations, employment opportunities, homelessness, and the like. To serve their own distinct but convergent purposes, the media, the public, and the politicians all contribute to the perpetuation of our perverse approach to controlling street crime. While there are countervailing forces at work, they seem unlikely to prevail in the foreseeable future.
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References
1.
1. David Johnston with Steven A. Holmes, “Experts Doubt Effectiveness of the Newly Enacted Crime Bill,”New York Times, 14 Sept. 1994.
2.
2. Mark Sidran, “This Is the Best of Times to Keep This City Livable,”Seattle Times, 13 Aug. 1993.
3.
3. Kathleen Maguire, Ann L. Pastore, and Timothy J. Flanagan, eds., Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1992 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993), p. 608.
4.
4. Richard Lacayo, “Lock 'em Up!”Time, 7 Feb. 1994, p. 58.
5.
5. Maguire, Pastore, and Flanagan, eds., Sourcebook, p. 597.
6.
6. Ibid., p. 623.
7.
7. Timothy Egan, “A 3-Strike Law Shows It's Not as Simple as It Seems,”New York Times, 15 Feb. 1994.
Samuel Walker , Sense and Nonsense about Crime: A Policy Guide (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1989), p. 111.
10.
10. Elliott Currie, Confronting Crime: An American Challenge (New York: Pantheon, 1985).
11.
11. “The Crime Bill: A Closer Look,”New York Times, 27 Aug. 1994.
12.
12. Johnston with Holmes, “Experts Doubt Effectiveness.”
13.
13. Malcolm M. Feeley, Court Reform on Trial: Why Simple Solutions Fail (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 200.
14.
14. “Crime, Cops, and Courts,”American Enterprise, 2(4):78 (July-Aug. 1991).
15.
Jeffrey D. Alderman , “Leading the Public: The Media's Focus on Crime Shaped Sentiment,”Public Perspective, 5(6):30-31 (Sept.-Oct. 1994).
16.
Secondary analysis by Cullen and his associates of survey research conducted in Texas between 1976 and 1982 also reveals considerable moderation in public attitudes. Francis T. Cullen, Gregory A. Clark, and John F. Wozniak, “Explaining the Get Tough Movement: Can the Public Be Blamed?”Federal Probation, 49:16-24 (June 1985).
17.
17. “Crimes, Cops, and Courts,” p. 80.
18.
18. William J. Bowers, Margaret Vandiver, and Patrick H. Dugan, “Punishment Priorities and the Preference for Death Penalty Alternatives among Citizens and Legislators: A New Look at Public Opinion on Capital Punishment” (Manuscript, Northeastern University, 19 Jan. 1994), p. 38.
19.
19. Ibid., tabs. 4 and 5.
20.
20. Ibid., tab. 9.
21.
21. Ibid., tabs. 10 and 12.
22.
22. Ibid., p. 35.
23.
23. Similar findings have been uncovered in Indiana by Edmund F. McGarrell and Marla Sandys, “Indiana Citizens and Lawmakers on the Death Penalty: Results of the 1992-1993 Public and Legislative Surveys” (Manuscript, Washington State University and Indiana University, July 1993).
24.
24. Gallup Report, p. 31.
25.
25. Ibid., p. 25.
26.
26. It must be acknowledged that the question that serves as an indicator for these findings is not, however, entirely convincing.
27.
Consider, for example, the following incongruities. Young males, who are most victimized, are not necessarily the most fearful. Some of the least victimized, rural Americans, are the most punitive. Women, who are among the most fearful, are the least punitive. Stuart Scheingold, The Politics of Law and Order: Street Crime and Public Policy (New York: Longman, 1984), pp. 47-48.
28.
28. Here again the available data leave something to be desired. Were data available at points closer to the 1988 and 1992 elections, the picture might look different.
29.
29. Herbert Jacob, The Frustrations of Policy: Responses to Crime by American Cities (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), pp. 20-21.
30.
30. Stuart A. Scheingold, The Politics of Street Crime: Criminal Process and Cultural Obsession (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), chap. 2.
31.
See also Stuart A. Scheingold, Toska Olson, and Jana Pershing, “Sexual Violence, Victim Advocacy, and Republican Criminology: Washington State's Community Protection Act,”Law and Society Review, 28(4):729-763 (1994).
32.
32. Joachim J. Savelsberg, “Knowledge, Domination, and Criminal Punishment,”American Journal of Sociology, 99(4):914-915 (Jan. 1994).
33.
33. Scheingold, Politics of Street Crime, pp. 18-22.
34.
34. Savelsberg, “Knowledge, Domination, and Criminal Punishment,” pp. 938-939.
35.
Joseph Gusfield was one of the first scholars to explore this terrain. See Gusfield, The Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).
36.
36. Lillian B. Rubin, Quiet Rage: Bernie Goetz in a Time of Madness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 238-239.
37.
37. Kathlyn Gaubatz, Crime in the Public Mind (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 222.
38.
38. My own research reveals that the break-through of street crime at the local level in the mid- to late 1970s was linked more closely to social dislocations and attendant resentments than to the crime rate. Scheingold, Politics of Street Crime, pp. 67-69.
39.
39. As I have written elsewhere about our seemingly insatiable thirst for crime in television, film, and literature: “Culturally speaking, it is altogether fair to say that our problem is not too much crime but too little. Even though crime exists—and exists in what the public chooses to think of as epidemic proportions—we still feel compelled to invent it.”Scheingold, Politics of Law and Order, p. 68.
40.
40. Ibid., pp. 59-77.
41.
41. The causal links between media portrayals and public attitudes remain very much in doubt. It does, however, seem reasonable to conclude, as Surette does, that there are indirect if not direct linkages. “The media has been found to be related to particular beliefs about crime but not straightforwardly or universally so. When effects do occur, the most common are increased belief in the prevalence and spread of crime, victimization, and violence, and cynical distrustful social attitudes....the media's portrayal of crime creates and defines a broad public awareness of crime, but...many other factors, such as social and physical environmental conditions, have more to do with the final shaping of public beliefs.”Ray Surette, Media, Crime and Criminal Justice (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1992), pp. 96-97.
42.
42. Jeffrey D. Alderman, “Leading the Public: The Media's Focus on Crime Shaped Sentiment,”Public Perspective, 5(3):26 (Mar.-Apr. 1994).
43.
43. Ibid., p. 27.
44.
44. Surette, Media, Crime and Criminal Justice, pp. 34-37 and 64-65.
45.
45. Ibid., pp. 38-41 and 64-67.
46.
With respect to this “vicarious victimization,” the causal linkages appear to be less in dispute. Surette, Media, Crime and Criminal Justice, pp. 102-103.
47.
47. Diana Gordon, Return of the Dangerous Classes: Drug Prohibition and Policy Politics (New York: Norton, 1994).
