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ISSUE GUIDES: Crime

CONSIDER THE CHOICES

 

PERSPECTIVES IN BRIEF

Getting Tougher with Offenders
Getting to the Roots of Violent Crime
Taking Rehabilitation Seriously

The underlying problem is that American society is too lenient with violent criminals, thereby encouraging lawlessness. Serious crimes deserve serious punishment, no matter who commits them. Whether criminals are youths or adults and whether the crime is a first offense or a subsequent offense it must be punished unequivocally. The most promising solution is to get tougher with all criminals, to step up enforcement efforts, impose longer jail and prison sentences, and build more prisons.
The United States has a serious crime problem because it is a harsh society. Unless we recognize corrosive social and economic forces that lead to criminality and take serious measures to address the causes of crime, we are unlikely to lower the rate of violent crime. Expanded efforts must be made to deal with underlying causes such as drug addiction and a lack of skills needed for gainful employment.
As a nation, we have relied increasingly on harsh sentences and incarceration as the punishment of choice for most offenders. What we have chosen to overlook is that most offenders emerge from prison more dangerous than they were before. While taking various measures to protect public safety, we have to get serious about rehabilitating criminals, and choosing alternatives to incarceration that prepare offenders to reenter society as law-abiding citizens. With youthful criminals especially, the justice system must emphasize rehabilitation.

PERSPECTIVES IN DETAIL

Getting Tougher with Offenders
Getting to the Roots of Violent Crime
Taking Rehabilitation Seriously


What should be done?

  • Enact mandatory sentences. Make sure that a firm connection exists between the seriousness of the crime and the severity of the sentence, even if that means sending more criminals to prison.
  • Step up law enforcement efforts so a higher percentage of offenders are caught and convicted.
  • Don't let criminals off easy, even on their first offense.
  • Make sure violent criminals get what they deserve, and make sure the rights and needs of victims of crimes are respected.
  • Relax the due process rules so that a higher percentage of apprehended criminals are convicted and sentenced.
  • Recognize and deal with the social and economic deprivation that is the root cause of crime.
  • Help convicts deal with the problems such as drug addiction or the absence of labor market skills that led them to commit criminal acts in the first place.
  • Halt and reverse the growing gap between America's haves and have-nots.
  • Make a commitment to intensive early education programs for disadvantaged children to help them break out of the cycle of poverty.
  • Except where violent offenders pose a direct threat to the community, the goal of sentencing should be to help offenders get back on their feet, and to break the habits such as drug addiction that got them into trouble in the first place.
  • Keep criminals from being repeat offenders by doing everything possible to reintegrate them into the community.
  • Take seriously the task of preparing offenders to rejoin society and play a productive role in it.
  • Maintain a separate juvenile justice system which treats youthful offenders differently, considering what is in the youth's best interest.
  • Expand sentencing alternatives to provide alternatives to incarceration.


    • Arguments For This Approach

  • Most violent crimes do not result in arrest, and even when suspects are arrested they often go free. That's a fatal flaw, since would-be criminals see that they can get away with serious crime.
  • The courts don't deal harshly enough with criminals, and as a result justice suffers.
  • Society has a right to protect itself against violent predators, and an obligation to imprison individuals who resort to criminal violence.
  • Much of what needs to be done to reduce America's crime problem over the long run falls outside the boundaries of the criminal justice system.
  • Rather than doing much to address the roots of the crime problem, public policy has, for the most part, dealt with the consequences of neglect.
  • Young people from disadvantaged families resort disproportionately to violent crime. They are offered little more than a choice between inadequate dead-end work and dangerous but lucrative illicit work in the drug trade.
  • The goal of sentencing should be to help offenders get back on their feet, not to further reduce their ability to serve productive lives.
  • Most criminals eventually return to civilian life, so it's necessary to take their rehabilitation seriously.
  • If we don't take rehabilitation seriously, criminals are likely to become repeat felons.
  • The alternative of throwing young offenders in prison with hardened criminals is especially likely to produce what we should seek to avoid: chronic offenders who repeatedly resort to violence


    • Arguments Against This Approach

  • Simply locking up more people for longer periods of time does little to provide a safer society. Prisoners leave more dangerous than they were when they entered. In any case, we can't go on indefinitely locking up more and more people.
  • Most people who commit serious crimes aren't calculators who would be deterred by the prospect of swifter, more certain, and more severe punishment.
  • This approach does nothing to address the long-term causes of our crime problem.
  • The real effects of get tough measures such as mandatory sentencing are strikingly at odds with their intentions.
  • Relaxing the due process rules will deprive people of their civil rights.
  • By resorting to community-based sentencing, this approach releases potentially dangerous criminals back into the community.
  • Attempting to prevent crime by engaging in ambitious social engineering is enormously expensive, and it is not at all certain that such efforts will succeed in reducing the crime rate.
  • Those who commit violent acts no matter what their age should get punishment that's commensurate with the serious crimes they committed.
  • Rehabilitation is an unrealistic pipe dream. There is little evidence that anyone knows how to rehabilitate individuals who are in the habit of committing violent acts.
  • The present system, which often imposes lighter sentence for younger criminals, who can supposedly be rehabilitated, actually encourages the young to continue their criminal activity.
  • Many forms of alternative sentencing, which are justified on the grounds that they help to rehabilitate, don't adequately protect the public against violent offenders, many of whom pose a serious danger to their communities.


    • QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: HOW THE PERSPECTIVES DIFFER

    Getting Tougher with Offenders
    Getting to the Roots of Violent Crime
    Taking Rehabilitation Seriously

    Q: What is a likely cost or tradeoff of each course of action?
    A:
    Taxpayers will have to pay more to put more cops on the street, and erect enough prisons to hold violent criminals, many of whom serve relatively long sentences. The relaxation of due process rules will in some instances compromise civil rights. ,Taxpayers will have to pay more for the public programs needed to deal with the social roots of crime. We'll also need to accept the fact that such efforts may not reduce violent crime rates, except over a period of many years.
    A:
    Taxpayers will have to pay more for the public programs needed to deal with the social roots of crime. We'll also need to accept the fact that such efforts may not reduce violent crime rates, except over a period of many years.
    A:
    Some forms of alternative sentencing, which are more likely than prison sentences to help rehabilitate violent felons and reintegrate them into the community, pose a greater danger to the public.


    Q: What's the main thing that's wrong with the nation's current anti-crime efforts?
    A:
    At every step from apprehension to arrest, the criminal justice system is seriously flawed. People often get away with violent crimes.
    A:
    While the nation spends an increasingly large amount to incarcerate growing numbers of violent criminals, relatively little is done about harsh social conditions that provide a breeding ground for crime.
    A:
    The system is increasingly punitive. It overlooks the fundamental need to rehabilitate prisoners and prepare them to reenter normal society when their terms are up.


    Q: What trends should concern us most?
    A:
    Demographics, which show that over the next decade there will be a substantial increase in the number of young people, who are particularly prone to violent crime.
    A:
    Social trends such as drug addiction, income inequality, a growth in single-parent families, and lack of job skills -- all of which are predictors of violent crime.
    A:
    While public expenditures on prisons are growing rapidly, very little is being done to rehabilitate prisoners. As a result, those who serve prison sentences for a first crime are increasingly likely to commit subsequent serious crimes.


    Q: Would this approach be fair to America's racial minorities?
    A:
    Because racial minorities are more at risk of being victims of violent crime than other Americans, they benefit especially from a "get tough" approach that takes violent criminals off the streets.
    A:
    Racial minorities suffer most from the social conditions — joblessness, addiction, and poor academic preparation — that lead to crime, so this approach would help them especially.
    A:
    America's prisons are filled disproportionately with racial minorities. They will be the first to benefit when rehabilitation is taken seriously.