Liberals and Crime

MENTION SOLUTIONS TO CRIME to a liberal--or a progressive or a neoliberal or whatever we are called these days--and the response is almost automatic, "get at the root causes." Poverty causes crime, to end the crime, end the poverty, Simple as that.

And, by and large, the liberal would be right Crime will never be eliminated in this country while permanent poverty grips large segments of our population. But just as this response may be techinically correct, so too is it entirely inadequate. Just as liberals have always (and justifiably) mocked conservatives for promising long-term economic prosperity and ignoring short-term misery, liberals have committed much the same offense with regard to crime.

"Getting at the root causes," admirable though such a goal may be, does not make the streets safer today or tomorrow, and because crime rates so highly among American concerns, it is the responsibility of public servants to address the issue--now. Of course short-term solutions will not succeed entirely--will not "get at the root causes"--but they can succeed in part, and that in itself is a worthy goal.

So liberals, in their current period of exile, should make up for years of neglecting crime by creating their own agenda for reform, a program that suggests more than just eliminating poverty. The Left can do this without abandoning its traditional and fully admirable commitments--concern for the weak, suspicion of the strong, and respect for Constitutional rights. But just as surely the Left must be receptive to ideas that may offend delicate sensibilities though still stay within the bounds of the law. Herewith then are several ideas for a new liberal program on crime.

The vigorous pursuit and prosecution of political corruption, much like the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Abscam effort. This of course is a largely symbolic move, unlikely to change the overall crime rate, but symbols can have tremendous importance, especially in politics Liberal solutions to most problems, not just crime, will demand that the government, instead of the so called free market, confront the problems of society. And these efforts will meet a dubious reception if the people of this country think the makers of these policies are corrupt.

Politicians can prove they are unafraid of exposure by encouraging the FBI to follow leads that connect the underworld to the political arena. For all the unseemly whining about Abscam in Congress, one fact is irrefutable "We haven't" as FBI chief William H. Webster said before Congress last week, "arrested anyone innocent."

Abscam has led to the conviction on corruption charges of 16 persons, including seven members of Congress and one senator. All of them, despite abundant and expensive legal counsel, have failed to prove they were entrapped. His pious rambling on the Senate floor notwithstanding. Harrison A. Williams remained a man convicted on nine counts of bribery, conspiracy, receiving an unlawful gratuity, contact of interest and interstate travel in aid of racketeering. To waste time and sympathy on crooks and bums like Williams opens liberal up to charges of caring only about their own and undermines the effectiveness of the government as a sponsor of social change.

The encouragement of non-governmental neighborhood citizens' action groups dedicated to the prevention and control of street crime. Here's a test: mention the name Guardian Angels to a group of liberals and count the seconds until you hear the words "fascist," "vigilante," or "Brown Shirt." It is just this kind of unjustified hypersensitivity that so often hurts the liberal cause. Consider the facts about the Guardian Angels: founded in October 1978 as a volunteer group, the Angels have expanded to more than 2000 members who walk the streets and ride the mass transit unarmed in 33 cities. Facing what The New York Times has called "chilly indifference to outright opposition" from the police, the Angels have not yet been accused of any of the dire misdeeds that liberals fear and police apparently would love to reveal. The Angels--at least so far--obey the law. And though it is difficult to prove, they seem to deter crime and make the citizens around them feel safer.

Hostility to the Angels exemplifies another, more general, problem liberals must confront--the unwillingess to let people solve their problems by themselves. Hit-and-run reformers with "we know what's good for you" attitudes will never provide the lasting solutions to problems that community-based efforts can achieve: Citizens' groups made up of ordinary neighborhood residents can establish a pattern of lawfulness in a community, one that an externally imposed "solution" would find difficult to match.

The transfer of police resources from automobiles to foot patrols. The growing urban fear of crime stems not only from contact with crime itself, but with the general atmosphere of disorder in society. Police can make citizens feel significantly more secure by providing the services that only a cop walking a beat can offer--shooting away bums, dispersing crowds of rowdy kids, and knowing the difference between neighborhood "regulars" and "strangers". As James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling pointed out in an article in the March Atlantic, the return of foot-patrols would not necessarily reduce crime, but would confront the "sense that the street is disorderly, a source of distasteful, worrisome encounters."

The major rebuttal to such a transfer of resources--since in a time of budgetary restraint it is correctly assumed that police forces will not be expanded--is that the return to foot patrols would limit mobility and increase response time. Recent research indicates, however, that the contemporary obsession with response time has not helped police effectiveness in the least. A study of response time in Kansas City revealed that on average assault victims did not report their crimes to the police until an hour after it had occurred; robbery victims waited 23 minutes, burglary victims more than an hour. So even though police arrived at the scene of these crimes within three minutes of being called, an effort to shave a few minutes or seconds off response time would have meant little.

Thus the diversion of some (not all) resources back to foot-patrols would not place the populace at any increased risk and could aid significantly the sense of order and safety in a neighborhood. The emphasis on mobility, as Charles Silberman pointed out in Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice "keeps patrol officers encapsulated in their cars, unable to get to know, or be known by, the people on their beat." Like citizen patrols, the return to foot-patrols by uniformed police officers could make the neighborhood the focus of a renewed and welcomed presence of law and order.

The abolition of juvenile court. The juvenile court system was a proud accomplishment of the Progressive era, a largely admirable attempt to treat children in trouble with extra care and sensitivity. The experiment seems largely to have failed, having helped neither the children nor the society it was supposed to protect. As currently organized, most juvenile judges have virtually unlimited power over what are called status offenses--"crimes" like ungovemability and truancy that are illegal only because of the perpetrator's status as a minor. Paradoxically, investigators have found that juvenile judges are actually more strict with status offenders than with genuine delinquents. Incarceration, though, can often be totally unproductive in dealing with the very real problems of status offenders, but incarceration is usually the only weapon at a juvenile judge's disposal. The system would be far better off if jurisdiction for status offenders were transferred to a comprehensive social service agency that would work with the families involved and prescribe a wide variety of correctional solutions--among them special education, community work and, as a last resort, incarceration.

As for minors accused of felonies and major misdemeanors, they would be tried in ordinary criminal courts. While juvenile judges tend to be strict with status offenders, they are often overly tax in their treatment of bona fide criminals who happen to be young. The only difference between the juveniles and the adults would be in sentencing; juveniles, as they currently do, would get shorter sentences and in separate juvenile facilities. Another promising correctional innovation is the "shock sentence" for juveniles--usually 30-to-60 days of confinement to give young offenders a close look at "hard time." The Massachusetts Department of Youth Services recently (and stupidly) abandoned exactly such a program in Worcester.

This separation of the juvenile court functions would come closer to realizing the hopes any fair society has for its misguided youths. It would give disruptive and troubled (but not actually dangerous) young people a chance to sort out their problems in cooperation with a competent government agency; and the transfer of actual criminal jurisdiction would lower the likelihood that threats to society, whatever their age, would remain free.

THE ABOVE SUGGESTIONS, though only sketched in broad outlines, have one factor in common: they would cost local and state governments little or no more money that they are spending now. Liberals are now acknowledging that all governments will be facing severe budgetary limits in the near future; they must tailor their new policy options accordingly. These suggestions, which involve only redistributed government expenditures or none at all, are intended to be ideas with real possibilities for implementation in the foreseeable future, not blueprints for a more enlightened day. Of course, only in the enlightened day down the road, when we as a society realize all the costs--not just in crime--of the social inequalities in this country will we find the ultimate answers to many of our problems. But until then, we have a duty to look for answers that will have to do in what may be a very long mean time.