Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 4, 1994 TAG: 9403050002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DON E. EBERLY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Washington partisans have been busy for some time now with other things. The issue of crime surprised them from behind like a night stalker, and now they're wasting no time doing what they do best: spinning out promises for costly remedies that will have minimal impact.
A wary public is not oblivious to the politics of crime. There is a familiar pattern here: Every time crime returns as an issue, Congress erupts into a frenzy of one-upmanship. Overnight, a serious and complex issue is converted to the currency of cowards.
It's not that crime isn't a serious issue, or that tougher laws are not called for. Nor is there any doubt that crime too frequently pays off for criminals. Indeed, society pays a great deal less to maintain the violent in prison than to let them roam free.
But what is also true is that Congress has been tinkering with the criminal code for decades and solutions to crime remain as elusive as ever. Crime is only one example of the strong tendency of politics to treat symptoms and avoid root causes.
The surest evidence that Congress has nothing new to offer this time is the stampede of parties to "own" the issue, as though public issues exist for their profit. The Democrats, looking to validate the ``new'' in New Democrat, have launched an incursion into this reliably Republican territory. Indignant Republicans respond by rushing to repossess the issue as though it is a piece of stolen property.
Crime illustrates just how bad government by opinion poll can be. The public wants solutions to crime all right, but there is little evidence that they believe Congress holds the answers. Communities all across America have been wrestling with the problem for years, and are finding effective solutions in neighborhood strategies and effective policing. This budding renaissance in citizenship should be recognized and rewarded, not nipped by a Congress bent on exploiting the issue for partisan advantage.
Washington is almost marginal to the solution of the crime problem. The national government's role in criminal justice is less than 5 percent. And in many cases, federal criminal code-toughening is a redundancy: States already have applied stiffer penalties. Furthermore, locking up for life three-time repeat violent offenders, though a laudable goal, would affect few career criminals (in high-crime New York, only 300) and it does little to curb the steady stream of criminals graduating from minor to major crimes.
There is simply no evidence that sociopathic criminals are likely to take the same rational look at all of these menacing new penalties as those who have been properly civilized.
If even half the political promises gushing like a geyser out of Washington are translated into funding commitments, American taxpayers are in for a few surprises. Prison spending is already one of the fastest-growing categories in most state budgets, and there is no way that even existing growth in the prison population will be sustained without stiff taxpayer resistance.
Which raises another question: Where are the conservatives who are so distressed over costly Big Government? They're mostly piling on - pushing crime bills one day, tax-limitation initiatives the next. It all seems to add up to good politics.
One reason crime has become the political equivalent of a blue-chip stock is that every community is now affected by it, not just urban ghettoes. What most localities are experiencing the most, however, is not extreme violence, but the degeneration of community life into general surliness and petty criminality. No society that already leads the world in its prison population is likely to rely on lengthy prison sentences for petty misdemeanors and general disruptiveness.
Crime is a societal problem requiring societywide solutions. The crime debate in Congress would advance America toward permanent solutions if only enough good men and women would resist political gamesmanship and turn crime into what educators call a teachable moment. The truth is that no amount of public expenditures and no ``lock-'em-up" crime bill will end the senseless violence and social disorder that has descended upon America.
How refreshing it would be in a country longing for honesty in politics if members of Congress stepped forward and acknowledged what the public already understands: the limitations of Congress' own policy remedies.
What would such a truthful debate consist of? Congress could honor and financially support the ingenuity and courage of thousands of local leaders, public as well as volunteer, who are reclaiming neighborhoods through neighborhood-based strategies.
Congress could speak to the deeper roots of crime that lie with the debasement of culture and the death of character. Crime expert James Q. Wilson has linked rising crime throughout history not to crime codes, but to character. When a culture fails to cultivate the human qualities of self-restraint, and instead seeks to shame those who promote virtue, it is in a deeper kind of trouble. Crime is perhaps the cruelest price a society pays for laughing at virtue.
For decades American culture has regarded the regulation of human vice and talk of virtue as an anachronism. No advanced society has come closer to making the ignoble noble. Evidence that society may be prepared to stop winking at deviance and again demand character comes in the catapulting of Bill Bennett's "Book of Virtues" to the top of The New York Times' best-seller list. Congress would spend its money more wisely by supplying a copy to every classroom in America.
Crime is steeply related to family structure and parenting competence. When fathers are present, kids commit dramatically less crime. The most sensible toughening of penalties for youthful violence would be to inflict fines on incompetent parents. Leaders everywhere - yes, including politicians - should demand a renaissance in parenting.
The most truthful solutions might be the least costly and most effective, which is what the people seem to want.
Don E. Eberly, a former congressional and White House aide, is president of The Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives, a state-based think tank in Harrisburg, Pa.
by CNB