Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 25, 1994 TAG: 9403280142
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED CHIRICOS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the wake of this media feeding frenzy, the proportion of Americans ranking crime as the nation's foremost problem jumps from 6 percent to 31 percent in six months (Gallup Poll), and politicians swim furiously to stay on top of the wave of fear.
Proposals to stem the growing crisis include the usual (more police, prisons and hard time for kids) and the unusual (censoring video games, curfews, uniforms and fingerprinting for schoolchildren, and castrating sex offenders).
The truth is, the surge of hysteria over crime and juvenile violence has little or no basis in fact. As such, it resonates a kind of ``moral panic'' that is not unlike earlier panics in our history over such things as witchcraft, communists, chlorine and crack cocaine.
The current panic distorts as much as it exaggerates. It treats a profound and enduring problem as if it were a sudden firestorm. It promotes responses that will have political more than substantive relevance. It must be recognized for what it is before it distorts our efforts to deal with serious issues in meaningful ways.
What realities lie behind the moral panic over crime and juvenile violence?
Is crime increasing? Is it more random? Do you and I suddenly have more to fear? Are juveniles more violent? In a word, no.
What we know about levels and changes in crime come from two sources. The first is the FBI's Index of Serious Crime, which compiles reported crimes from all police jurisdictions in the country. The figures for murder, rape, aggravated assault and robbery form the Violent Index and, when combined with larceny, burglary and auto theft, make up the Total Index of Serious Crime, or the crime rate.
Rapid increases during the 1960s and 1970s gave way to a slowing in the 1980s and declines in the 1990s.
Because many crimes are not reported to police, the Justice Department has conducted extensive surveys of victims since 1973. Results are unavailable for individual states or for periods after 1992. But nationwide, rates of victimization for property crimes have dropped steadily since 1976. Rates for violent crimes were actually lower in 1992 than in 1976.
If crime and violence are not increasing, is the chance of victimization becoming more random? This is a consistent theme in current fears about crime. If ``random'' means an attack by a stranger (as opposed to a friend or relative), victims' surveys show that such attacks have dropped 8 percent since 1980.
Moreover, the only groups to show a real increase in the likelihood of being victimized by violence are young males. The least-often victimized (adult white men and women) have rates for victimization that are one-tenth to one-fifteenth the rates for young black males and one-eight to one-twelfth the rate for young white males. In fact, adults are no more likely, and most are less likely, to be victimized than they were 10 years ago.
Even if crime and violence are decreasing and becoming less random, isn't it true that juvenile crime is out of control? It must first be understood that there is no direct measure of juvenile crime.
Neither FBI reports nor victims' surveys address this question. All that we know about trends in juvenile crime comes from trends in the arrests of juveniles.
Changes in rates of arrest of juveniles could reflect changes in community concerns that affect reporting of crimes to the police or changes in police emphasis and success in arresting juveniles. For example, some police departments monitor juveniles who have a history of arrests. One might expect communities with such programs to have higher juvenile-arrest rates independent of trends in juvenile crime itself.
Even with that caveat, what we know about juvenile arrests lends no credence to moral panic. In fact, juvenile arrests as a percentage of all arrests are virtually unchanged since the mid-1980s.
If crime and violence are not increasing and are not becoming more random, why the moral panic?
One explanation might be that several highly publicized and brutal attacks have so captured the public consciousness that they have come to define, for many, the essence of the crime problem. There are few among us who could not recount the details of the beating of Los Angeles truck driver Reginald Denny or the Florida tourist murders or the gruesome Long Island Rail Road killings.
A common theme to these crimes is that each involved white adult victims and young black male suspects. Yet far from typical criminal violence, these are tragic exceptions to the norm of victimization that occurs overwhelmingly within age and race bounds.
Departures from the norm are often considered newsworthy. They may become more so when they resonate criminal stereotypes and tap into deeply held racial anxieties.
It is almost as if the current panic emerged precisely when the violence that has terrorized inner-city neighborhoods for decades threatened - even if by stunning exception - to leap the boundaries and defy the norms of violent victimization.
The danger of moral panic is that it treats a substantial, enduring but no more threatening problem as if it were a sudden firestorm. In our toughest neighborhoods and on our meanest streets, there has been a devastating loss of work, community and family in recent decades. In their place, violence and drugs afford avenues for identity and income. Yet all through the gang wars that began in the 1970s and the crack wars of the 1980s, no more than 6 percent of Americans considered crime our top problem.
Responses made in a panic atmosphere will emphasize short-term solutions. Building more walls around us is easier than digging down to the roots of work, community and family. Put away the 100, 1,000 or 10,000 kids most involved in violent crime, and what will happen? In a matter of days, their younger brothers and cousins will flame up from the same smoldering roots that have been untouched by our new walls.
The panicked response has no time for roots. The political response has no patience for prevention. The mixture of panic and politics is a prescription for failure.
Ted Chiricos, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, wrote this article for The Tallahassee Democrat.
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