Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 31, 1994 TAG: 9409010058
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cal Thomas
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If members of Congress were unaware of the facts, they were naive and hadn't fully studied the issue. If they knew the facts and held positions that contradict the evidence, they were lying to us.
Supporters of the bill acted as if the billions of dollars in additional spending for social programs, which they called ``crime prevention,'' was something new. Such spending that remained in the measure Congress passed is no more new than attempts by the federal government to end poverty by throwing money at the poor without addressing the poverty of some of their souls.
We have spent $3 trillion fighting crime in our cities with social programs. This approach has followed the liberal philosophy that people commit crimes because their material desires have not been sufficiently met. This is why we get proposals like midnight basketball and classes on self-esteem.
The Republican minority in the Senate was right to take a principled stand against the Democrats' shell-out of more money for programs that, history shows, just don't work.
UCLA Professor James Q. Wilson offers a reality check about crime and our mostly failed responses to it in the September issue of Commentary Magazine. Wilson says that only about 6 percent of the young male population is responsible for more than half of all serious crimes committed by young men, so proposals for reducing crime should focus on that 6 percent. He also asserts that the most frightening change in criminality over the past 10 years is the growth of random killings by young people, most of them male.
Wilson also challenges widely accepted nostrums and fads, such as ``three strikes and you're out'' legislation, gun control, rehabilitation and censorship of violent television programs because of their negative influence on the young.
Specifically, Wilson believes that crime can be reduced by targeting police deployment in neighborhoods with high rates of youth violence, aggressive supervision of the small percentage of people who are responsible for serious violations of the law (he admits that will be controversial and a challenge to civil libertarians), enforcement of truancy and curfew laws, and welfare reform.
He rejects the supposed causes of crime, such as unemployment, racism, poor housing, too little schooling and lack of self-esteem. The real causes, he argues, are temperament, early family experiences and the disastrous effects the neighborhood culture of violence can have on a young person. To which I would add the failure of society to instill a moral compass and affirm a virtuous code for living.
Republicans should do more than play defense against the Democrats' allegations of callousness about the poor and deprived. They should begin an offensive against failed and morally and financially bankrupt liberal policies.
The entire Great Society rested on the premise that government could ``buy out'' the evil that lurks in some souls. The evidence shows how wrong this thinking was. It didn't work, it has been incredibly expensive, and now the Democrats have upped the ante.
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB