Word: crimed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first count, liberals are mostly right. Reagan usually got the facts wrong when he railed against high taxes, Big Government, unnecessary regulations, welfare cheats, liberal hostility to religion, the communist threat, liberal softness on crime and defense--and all of his other ideological bugaboos. Sometimes he got confused. Sometimes he made stuff...
...federal welfare bureaucracy is inefficient. Liberals do fail to deal rationally with issues of national security and violent crime. A lot of government paperwork is unnecessary and counterproductive. Congress does waste a lot of money...
RICO, put on the books in 1970, was aimed at organized crime--more specifically at Italian crime families known as the Mafia. Prosecutors were troubled that mobsters could keep running their businesses during criminal trials and even after convictions. Congress responded by passing powerful legislation permitting the seizure of "enterprises" that derive money from illegal activities. They also provided the extraordinary remedy of triple damages--meaning that courts could assess damages at three times the amount of injury actually suffered...
...their zealousness, Congress went a little too far. Parts of the law were left intentionally vague to allow prosecutors free reign in their efforts to nail organized crime kingpins. There was also the valid worry that a law that singled out Italian-run organized crime would be unconstitutional...
Drug czar Bennett agrees with those correctional officers who believe shock incarceration is no cure-all for street crime, though it can help "build character." It seems to have the most effect on nonviolent young men for whom crime has not become a hardened way of life. The program appears to work best for youngsters who might have been helped just as much by a resolute kick in the pants and some productive community service and victim reparation. Perhaps that is a more realistic way of coping with the burgeoning problem of youthful crime...