Wilson's New Freedom

CRITICIZING the theories on crime of James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government, is like dissecting an elephant: you know what you want to do, but where do you start? Neither a criminologist nor a sociologist, Wilson said last week that his interest in crime came about "entirely (through) a process of drift." An expert on government bureaucracies dabbling in a social issue, he began to look at crime when he studied urban police departments because he decided the only way to understand police effectiveness in crime control was to study the nature of crime itself.

Having approached the subject through analysis of other peoples' work, Wilson admitted last week he has not done "a whole lot" of original research. Nevertheless, he has written or collaborated on numerous articles and books on the subject, covering topics ranging from gun control to heroin.

The more controversial of Wilson's theories first try to explain the rise of predatory criminal behavior in recent years and then offer programs to curb the increase, not the causes. Wilson prefaces his policy proposals with a description of the failure of liberal reforms in the '60s: despite massive expenditures on social welfare programs, street crime--primarily an inner city problem--has flourished. Wilson concludes that eliminating social injustice will not eliminate crime. He attributes rising crime rates to "the lack of community"--broken families, a lack of accepted values and behavior and other traditional communal ties. He believes there is a lapse of a generation or two between increased affluence and the rise of community and suggests that trying to cure crime through social programs ignores the need for immediate relief.

This outlook has led Wilson to scoff at the many social reformers who stress the need to deal with the causes of crime, and he says, "I have yet to see a 'root cause' or to encounter a government program that has successfully attacked it..."

Wilson deals with the problem like a political scientist: through a cost-benefit analysis of the criminal's "decision to become involved in crime." He presumes that the criminal is rational enough to weigh the potential costs of an illegal act and will base his actions on the risk he is willing to take. Not surprisingly, his belief in the rational criminal leads Wilson to the idea of raising the cost relative to the benefit. When the criminal sees that an illegal act is too risky, Wilson reasons, he will restrain from the illicit activity.

From this analysis, Wilson arrives at a solution: increase legitimate opportunities for the underprivileged, but place major emphasis on mandatory punishment. He divides criminals into hard-core lawbreakers, potential criminals and experimenters who drift along. The latter two groups will diminish if faced with severe punishment, he reasons, while isolating the first group for extended durations will reduce its ability to repeatedly break the law. His proposal would not eliminate crime, he says, but it would reduce it.

ALTHOUGH HE APPLAUDS such innovations as allowing juvenile delinquents to perform alternative service and improving social conditions in general, the main impact of Wilson's statements is directed towards putting more people in jail, earning him the nickname "Captain Lock 'em Up." In Thinking About Crime he suggests that ideally "every conviction for a non-trivial offense would entail a penalty that involved a deprivation of liberty." Wilson includes a wide latitude of programs in "deprivation"; with society's present options, however, most convicted criminals would end up in jail, not rehabilitation or treatment centers.

Wilson said last week that "rehabilitation cannot be a replacement for punishment." The convicted criminal must be punished under "clear and legal boundaries," and rehabilitation is only an optional concomitant to punishment. "But," he writes, "the prospects for rehabilitation should not be allowed to govern the length of sentence." Implicit in this argument is the belief that the criminal, like a dog at an obedience school, can be disciplined but not corrected. After all, he adds, "behavior is easier to change than attitudes."

Last week he said that there are rehabilitation programs that have been fruitful, but only on a minor scale. He added, "We haven't been successful in finding relevant strategies that are widely applicable."

A Harvard academic urging a crackdown on small-time criminals evokes accusations of social injustice, a charge that greatly irritates the usually unflappable Wilson. He correctly points out that the prime victims of street crime are the urban poor and claims that his real concern is with "the disadvantaged society." Throughout his writing, Wilson makes a special effort to show how his theories meet the needs of ghetto blacks and urban poor.

This analysis has serious shortcomings. Wilson resists attempts to examine the psychological causes of crime, relegating alienation and frustration to lesser, indirect roles. Also ignored are the presence of sub-cultures in which certain kinds of criminal behavior are more socially acceptable than in other communities. Housebreaking, a serious crime to the affluent, is nothing more than a weekend diversion for many blue-collar youths.

Wilson's theories ignore the basic corruption of a society in which, as the Massachusetts Governor's Advisory Committee on Corrections reported this summer, "Street crime is less prevalent and far smaller in dollar value than white collar and organized crime." Low income neighborhoods do not contain criminal elements that are any more immoral or amoral than those of the wealthiest suburbs with high degrees of "community." Street hoods are merely society's biggest losers, with neither the polish nor position to be respectable white collar criminals. They are intellectually, psychologically and economically vulnerable and frustrated. A housebreaker does not rationally compute the cost-benefit analysis of a robbery in the same terms as his more successful middle class counterpart. Even Wilson admits that "burglaries are committed by unskilled persons who often act opportunistically rather than by careful plan."

Rationalizing his lack of sympathy, Wilson writes, "Caring--empathy--is the vulgar expression of ideology, where ideology exists. Sometimes empathy is an expression of nothing at all." Last week he said "the moral culpability" between an average burglar and the Watergate burglars is "exactly the same. [There is] no difference in motivation relevant to the subject of guilt."

If one accepts Wilson's studies and analysis, there is a certain internal consistency to his arguments. But it disintegrates when one examines the means of punishment. American prisons--especially the state and county institutions where most convicted street criminals serve their sentences--are brutalizing and dehumanizing beyond toleration. A violent, sexually segregated environment is obviously not conducive to the development of a balanced personality. The prison riots at Attica and Walpole were not carried out by coddled criminals. Yet Wilson said last week, "Believe me, there is no evidence" that prisons will turn an offender into a criminal. "On the average, they come out the same as they went in." If Wilson understood some of these incarcerated cost-benefit analysts on a personal level, he would hold different views.

If more people were to be put in jail for longer periods, a large scale prison expansion will be mandatory. With many counties, states and the federal government operating near or on deficits, few prisons will be built and antiquated facilities will simply be stuffed with more bodies. Months ago Boston's ancient Charles Street Jail was condemned by U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. as "cruel and unusual punishment."

Despite these problems, Wilson's writings and theories have a wide audience. His guarded academic prose masks personal biases in books written for the layman as well as the expert. His theories soothe middle class fears and absolve politicians of blame for inaction. He castigates liberals and even criticizes some reactionaries, but he is one Harvard professor who sells in Peoria.

Wilson often tailors his arguments to his audience: his writings define punishment to include progressive programs but then he states that none has been successful; he changes emphasis from violent crimes--where his theories have more legitimacy--to small-time street crime in general. But his attacks on social reforms that try to cure the basic roots of crime are superficial: from the courtroom to the parole board, the criminal reform movement has been so understaffed, misdirected and politically compromised that any conclusions are premature and rest on inadequate data. As one Law Enforcement Assistance Administration official said last week, "Wilson can get away with that because no one really knows what is correct."

Theories of deterrence have some relevance to a small class of rational law breakers, and certain violent offenders do have to be isolated. Nonetheless, shallow conclusions will only lead to greater inequities, and increasingly prisons will become cosmetics merely hiding society's deeper flaws. A frightened, receptive audience and a poorly defined field have allowed this political scientist to become a sociology dilettante. But then, as H.L. Mencken explained, "A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas."