THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505050505
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN EGERTON
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
IT'S ALL THE RAGE
Crime and Culture
WENDY KAMINER
Addison-Wesley. 266 pp. $22.
IN It's All the Rage: Crime And Culture, former public defender Wendy Kaminer examines the growth of violent crime and resulting cries for revenge in America. The author of I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional (about the self-help industry), also a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, continues her dissection of current pop culture and demonstrates how that culture is often reflected in the courts. Her contemplative, sometimes ironic tone is an excellent antidote to the volatile, albeit difficult, material of this book. The crime here is on the order of murder, robbery and rape; white-collar transgressions are not addressed.
Kaminer notes that the echo of our culture in the courtroom can be bad or good; it depends on whose ox is being gored. For instance, in commenting on the trend to federalize criminal behavior (providing enough facilities for incarceration is another matter), Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank observes, ``People favor federalizing what they don't like and oppose federalizing what they like.'' And blacks and whites differ appreciably on restricting bail, restricting appeals, making parole more difficult to obtain and the toughness of sentences. ``There is no belief in neutral process in this world,'' Kaminer concludes.
In eight essays, she delineates various effects of our culture - television, race and the growth of victimization are just three - on the criminal justice system. In enumerating the dangers of victimization, she reminds the reader that justice is not a form of therapy.
It's All the Rage also centers on a complex discussion of the death penalty and the public's misunderstanding of it. The essays ``The Death Penalty - How It's Perceived'' and ``The Death Penalty - How It's Applied'' present effective arguments (from Camus to present-day district attorneys) largely against capital punishment. She observes wryly that while people don't trust the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the mail or the Internal Revenue Service to enforce the tax code fairly, many are happy to trust the criminal justice system with the power to put people to death.
Kaminer discusses our panic and our call for harsh methods of punishment in response to the growth of crime, and I wish that she had been more sympathetic here and less eager to describe the population as if it were in the drooling clutches of the National Rifle Association. After all, she lists many frightening changes in American conduct and culture, including the 30 percent increase in illegitimacy since 1960 and the 100 percent increase from 1985 to 1991 in the number of males ages 13 to 17 arrested for murder. She also describes the murder of a Japanese exchange student last year in Louisiana as an example of our growing sense of anarchy, and she cites several examples, including media coverage, of our taking pleasure in violence. It's hard to be sanguine in the face of such developments.
A strength of It's All the Rage is its thoughtful 300-year history of views on crime and punishment in America, from ``badness'' as a result of nature in colonial America to intermittent periods since, when it was believed that the criminal was produced by his or her environment and therefore could be rehabilitated. That view is not so prevalent today.
It's All the Rage predicts neither a reduction of crime nor an increase of fair and dispassionate punishment. Possible improvements might include better policing of the black market of guns; better drug treatment; expanded supervision for people on probation and parole; the application of knowledge about child abuse to the treatment of juvenile offenders; and community policing. The last is ideally ``a hybrid of enforcement and community relations work, aimed partly at crime prevention.'' All might temper our rage and fear.
- MEMO: Ann Egerton is a writer who lives in Baltimore. by CNB