Word: crimeds
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Crime is essentially, and perhaps necessarily, a youthful pursuit; more than three-quarters of those arrested in 1976 were under 25. Between 1960 and 1976, the 14-to-20-year-old, or potentially criminal, population grew remarkably, accounting for a good part of the criminal juggernaut. Moreover, the '60s saw a 39 per cent increase in the ratio of youth to adult criminals, the first such rise in over 70 years. The socialization of the young, the internalization of societal norms, burdened with this "demographic overload," partially collapsed, resulting in more crime...
...young turn to crime, so do the poor. The turn to crime as the clearest opportunity for success, and the route taken by their role models; IBM doesn't recruit in the ghetto, but the numbers runners do. And the need for success, almost palpable in affluent American society, redoubled by television, cannot be underestimated; lack of material success means lack of identity, and the precarious sense of self of poor people causes them to seek the excitement of crime to confirm their existence...
...more than a function of youth or poverty, crime, and particularly violent crime, is perceived as a function of race. What most urban dwellers have intuited can be statistically shown--black people account for a disproportionate amount of violent street crime. Were it only a result of the crippling poverty that keeps 31 per cent of American blacks below the Federal subsistence level, crime statistics would correlate; yet, although in 1976 blacks accounted for 31 per cent of property crimes (such as burglary), they commited 60 per cent of the robberies, 40 per cent of the aggravated assaults, and about...
Given the nature of criminality in America, what can be done to the criminal justice system to reduce crime? Not much, says Silberman. Custom and internal constraints keep crime down, not police, courts or prisons. Ultimately, we depend on our own willingness to obey the law. Yet certain reforms can play a small part...
SILBERMAN'S BOOK is most useful in debunking already proposed panaceas. Put more cops on the street, improve telecommunications, repeal the "exclusionary rule" developed by the Warren Court, stifle corruption, and you will reduce crime--so goes the litany on police reform. Silberman rejects these nostrums, demonstrates their inefficacy, and offers his own. The most crucial reform in policing, he says, is to change its very focus, from law-enforcement to public service. "The closer a police officer's relationship with the people on his beat," Silberman writes, "the greater his chances of reducing crime... improving police-community relationships...