Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 30, 1993 TAG: 9311300351
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With all the throw-away-the-key rhetoric flying about, it is worth observing that quadrupling the number of people behind bars hasn't made Americans feel any safer. We need to ask ourselves what matters more: (1) politicians' efforts to appear tough on crime in order to win elections, or (2) actual improvements in public safety, through crime prevention and reduced recidivism.
If public safety matters more than political safety, why not emphasize - and direct resources toward - anti-crime measures that show some promise of working? Here are several:
Community policing. Winning converts in police departments across the country, including in Roanoke, this idea is based on the premise that citizens can be better protected if police are attuned to the communities they patrol. A neighborhood organized in self-defense - in partnership with police - can prevent more crimes instead of waiting to call 911 after a rape or murder has occurred.
More police officers. These are needed in any case, but also to expand community policing.
Under one good idea - a so-called Police Corps - students who qualify could pay for their college educations by serving as police officers. There'd be risks and concerns to work out, but the potential benefits are considerable. A Police Corps would offer a steady supply of high-quality recruits bringing new spirit and ideas to anti-crime efforts. While we're at it, we also need more probation officers.
Boot camps. High-discipline boot camps for first offenders vary in their effectiveness, depending in part on whether the intent is merely to save money in the short term or to turn offenders away from lives of crime.
New York state's "shock incarceration camps" are worth emulating. They put volunteer inmates through 500 hours of therapy aimed at ending their addictions to drugs, alcohol and crime. An "aftershock" parole plan includes a guaranteed temporary job for camp recruits, and help finding permanent work.
More intensive case management. When a prison inmate is released - typically back to the influences that helped lead him into criminality in the first place, with no job or place to stay, and often with untreated addictions - recidivism is a likely outcome.
Counseling, other assistance and closer supervision during parole are, again, costly in the short run but cost-effective in the long run, with big savings for every ex-convict who does not return to crime. Among the savings: the sparing of would-be victims.
Early intervention. By the time a teen-ager has landed in the juvenile justice system, it is in many cases too late to deter him from a life of crime. The state needs to get tough early with truants, before they move on to more serious offenses.
Gun control. No, this isn't going to make violent crime go away. For one thing, too many handguns are already in circulation to hope for that.
But all one has to do is listen to the law-enforcement community's pleas for help against assault weapons and the like, or look at the homicide rates in nations that don't have such easy access to handguns or so many guns in circulation, or consider the current proliferation of guns among kids, to know that appropriate gun-control measures have to be part of an anti-crime effort.
Drug treatment. Nearly half of prison inmates have drug problems. When they return to the streets, joining the nation's million hard-core drug addicts who are not getting treatment, they also often return to crime to support their habits. Drug-treatment for inmates, at the very least, is an investment with a proven record of reducing recidivism.
Crack down on violent offenders. Lengthening the prison time actually served by offenders is a good idea if it's focused on those who commit violent crimes. Unless alternative sentencing is emphasized for nonviolent offenders, abolishing parole would quickly bankrupt the state.
If, however, more prisons are needed to house the violent, so be it. Never mind punishment: Predators must be isolated from peaceful citizens who deserve protection. And the killers and rapists shouldn't sit around watching TV all day. They should be made to work.
It isn't helpful to perpetuate the old liberal/conservative debate between those who would blame crime on poverty and handguns, and those who would dot the landscape with prisons. We need to address conditions that breed crime; we also need to punish evil people and stop them from hurting others.
We need to be tough on crime, and effective against it. Let's look to what works, to measures that may allow us to be, as well as to feel, safer.
by CNB