Getting to the Roots of Violent Crime
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.
What Should be Done?
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.
Arguments For This Approach
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.
Arguments Against This Approach
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.
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