Word: underreaction
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...because secrecy can lead to unidentified power. Power in any form can be abused, but unidentified power has a particular potential for abuse. How then can we, are we going to provide for good intelligence for our country, and yet ensure against abuse? On the one hand, we can underreact and simply assume that the relatively limited number of abuses in the past will not be repeated because we are more conscious of the problem today. On the other hand, we can overreact and so attempt to control potential abuses that we handcuff and handicap our intelligence effort...
Court reform is perhaps most urgently needed in the juvenile court system--the education of criminals begins very early. Juvenile courts now either overreact or underreact; the first mars children for life with prison terms, the second gives them a sense that there are no consequences for antisocial acts. The juvenile courts need more of a choice than jail or a slap on the wrists: some means of instilling a notion of just dessert in young criminals without resorting to homeopathic incarceration...
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