NCJ Number
168921
Date Published
1993
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This chapter reviews various theories of crime and crime control that have been advanced in the United States and then suggests a strategy for approaching the problem.
Abstract
A judge's view of crime control in the United States offers a seven-point plan: gun control, education, restitution and heavy fines, attacking intrafamily crime, jobs for criminals, consistency in sentencing, and redress for victims. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark sees the causes of crime as residing in economic inequities and racism and recommends a national effort to correct these wrongs. A review of crime definition and control in America from colonial times to the present shows a class struggle in which the dominant class defines prohibited conduct for its own fun and profit. Marxist criminology proposes a classless system that will by its structure preclude incentives for crime, but history has shown this to be an illusion. Capitalism, on the other hand, is characterized by the disaffection of the underclass and the greed of the overclass, creating tensions that lead to crime and panic- induced solutions. Some approaches to crime control have recommended a relaxation of constitutional protections in the interest of making it easier to catch and prosecute criminals. President Lyndon Johnson's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice advised that "no single formula, no single theory, no single generalization can explain the vast range of behavior called crime." It offered a multi-faceted strategy for addressing crime. In addition to the aforementioned analysis and proposals for crime control, scholars have also offered proposals. This chapter outlines the strategy recommended by criminologist Norval Morris and his colleague Gordon Hawkins. The author of this chapter advises that quick fixes and reflexive responses have resulted in a "crazy-quilt" pattern of programs that do not work or that lack any logical basis for adoption. He recommends the creation of a President's Commission on Crime that would bring scholars, experimenters, and practitioners together to review all that is known, to point the way for future research, to weld a national program to combat street crime, and to offer a strategy that offers some hope of success.