Crime and Politics

Abstract

Abstract The crime rate in the US has exploded since 1960. Despite decreases in recent years, reported violence in 2001 exceeded the levels of the late 1970s. Government at all levels has tried to address the crime problem, with mixed success. Police forces that formerly focused on patrol cars’ responding to citizen calls embraced the proactive approach of community policing; courts set up specialized branches, hearing cases relating to narcotics, guns, and domestic violence; criminal sentences sharply increased, filling prisons and jails with more than 2 million people. Yet, crime rates continue to rise and fall, seemingly without regard to government programs. Strikingly, little evidence has been collected about which anticrime activities are truly effective and which are not. Instead, members of Congress and state legislators, who set the tone for the fight against crime, tend to base their actions on what sounds good in political advertisements rather than what has proved to work through scientific experiment. Still, there are a number of promising ideas in law enforcement, juvenile crime, corrections, and other areas that could help prevent crime if they could obtain adequate financial support.

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