TOUGH LAW ENFORCEMENT AND STIFF CRIMINAL SENTENCING WORK
By Charles W. Moore
© 1999 Charles W. Moore
If you ask people where one would be most likely to have their house burgled, England or the United States, most would pick the latter without thinking twice. And most would be wrong.
In fact, according to 1992 Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker, writing in the Dec. 28, '98 issue of Business Week, Britons get burgled these days at twice the rate Americans do.
Becker maintains that the most important quality-of-life improvement for US citizens over the past two decades has not been low unemployment and a strong economy, but rather dramatically reduced "fear of becoming a victim on the street, in schools, or in the privacy of homes."
Crime Victimization Surveys cited by Becker indicate that US property crimes per household fell rapidly during the '80s and '90s, now standing at just half the 1980 rate. Crimes of violence have also declined, although not as sharply.
The reason, Becker maintains, is primarily better police work, sterner judges, and longer jail sentences. That analysis of course flies in the face of liberal conventional wisdom.
Last year Saint Mary's University sociology Professor George S. Rigakos published an essay in which he claimed, among other things, that "...more cops, courts and corrections services tend to result in more crime.... The best way to turn a youngster into a career criminal is to send him to prison."
To which Professor Becker would reply "hogwash," or words to that effect. He writes: "Studies by economist Steve Leavitt of the University of Chicago and others show that the increase since 1980 in the courts' propensity to convict and imprison criminals made a major contribution to the sizable fall in U.S. crime. Persons behind bars cannot commit crimes against the public..." Becker contends that increased probability of spending significant time in prison is a major crime deterrent, and points out that the supposed "paradox" of prison populations growing while crime drops is simply attributable to the fact that bad guys can't commit crimes in the community while in jail .
Becker critiques both conservative and liberal rhetoric on this issue, arguing that crime rates are dropping even as the traditional family and public morality continue to melt down, while crime grew rapidly in the '60s and '70s when unemployment was low and general prosperity high. "Increasing the apprehension of criminals," and sentencing those convicted to "significant prison terms," is what has worked, he says.
In Canada, where US-style police crackdowns and tougher sentencing were not implemented, crime increased by 8% between 1984 and 1994. It would be even worse, if people, for fear being victimized, didn't take extraordinary precautions that were unnecessary a few years ago. They install alarms, keep off the streets at night; and so on. This dampens the overall crime rate, but has nothing to do with a safer society. Parents know their children don’t have the same freedom and security outside the home they themselves enjoyed 20 or 30 years ago.
The fundamental crime problem in Canada is that offenders -- young or adult -- are much less likely to suffer severe punishment for their crimes than Americans, even when caught and convicted, thanks to lenient criminal justice policies favoured by Canada's liberal/left.
After Rudolph Giuliani became mayor of New York City in January 1995, arrests went up 27%, while the murder rate dropped by 40.7% during the first half of 1995. Crime decreased 30% overall in that period, debunking the liberal theory that "crime is inevitable" as long as poverty and racial discrimination exist.
By November 1997, murders in had dropped 62% from 1993's rate, with robberies down 47%, and New York ranked a modest 161st on the FBI's "most dangerous cities in America" list -- the safest U.S. city above one million population.
There are also potential means of addressing the "prison as crime academy" problem, which inheres in how prisons are structured and administered -- not with the concept of punitive incarceration. Canadian crime author Carsten Stroud argues that prisons should be miserable but not cruel, "scrupulously fair, clean, orderly, but hard as steel. No free time, no weight rooms, no ball park, no swimming pool, no parole, no sex in the showers, no day passes, no compassionate leave, no conjugal visits, no fights, no fun, confined to your cell unless you behave, and if you don’t cooperate your sentence will be extended."
British Columbia Report publisher Link Byfield contends that when a fifteen year old gets caught stealing his first car, his name should be published and he should spend a month of 12-hour days shovelling gravel, "and he should receive three strokes of the lash before his release."
That sort of prescription scandalizes liberals, but experience south of the border demonstrates that tough law enforcement and tough sentencing yield a safer society.
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