Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [286]
20
A NATION BESIEGED
EARLY IN THE 1950s, THE CRIME PROBLEM EMERGED FROM THE SHADOWS AND took its place at center stage. Crime, of course, had always been a theme in American political and social life. In almost every period, some writers bewailed (usually without much in the way of evidence) the terrible increase in crime. But there is not much doubt about a few central facts in the second half of the century. The “crime problem” has gotten more intense in people’s minds, and in their lives. Politically, too, crime has become a central issue.
The postwar crime problem did not burst like a bombshell on the public; it crept up gradually. In the 1950s, there was an uproar over juvenile delinquency. One heard a lot of excited talk about the young and the wild, about adolescents mad for vice and violence. The sense of crisis probably peaked between 1953 and 1956.1 Less is heard about juvenile delinquency these days, but not because delinquency has gone away. On the contrary. Today, the whole idea of “juvenile delinquency” seems somehow soft and flabby; it conjures up joyriding, stealing apples, truancy. “Youth crime” is another matter. People today are petrified of young toughs who swagger about the cities, speaking the language of rage and contempt with their clothes, voices, and bodies. These are not (we think) “delinquents,” not “wayward youth”; they are just plain criminals, adult in their violence and menace, if not in their years. Middle-class parents are also deathly afraid that their own children will turn sour, and, more especially, that they may fall into the bottomless pit of addiction.
After the fifties, fear of crime became more general. Fear of violent, explosive crime has engulfed our huge, decaying urban centers, and gradually, over the years, spread into the suburbs, and even into small towns and villages. The Gallup poll, for what it is worth, records a feeling among people that crime is going up, up, and away. In 1990, 51 percent of respondents said there was “more crime” in their area than “a year ago”; only 17 percent said “less.” No less than 84 percent thought there was “more crime in the United States than there was a year ago.”2 Earlier polls showed similar opinions.
In the sixties, there were cries of anguish all over the political map. A massive governmental crime report, issued in the 1960s, warned that violent crime, and the fear it spawned, was disfiguring American society and damaging the social order. Crime had “impoverished” the life of many Americans, especially Americans in big cities. People lived in a fortresslike atmosphere: they “stay behind the locked doors of their homes rather than risk walking in the streets at night.”3 Two specific types of violence lay behind these grim words. The first was overtly political—urban riots, especially race riots in the cities; and unrest over the unpopular war in Vietnam. The second was ordinary crime: violence and theft on city streets.
In retrospect, the political fear seems somewhat exaggerated. Since they had no crystal balls, no one could know that when the Vietnam War ended, the rioting would end with it. Certainly, there was no reason to be optimistic about race violence, or to suppose that the urban barrios and ghettos would simmer down. In 1968, an assassin’s bullet struck down Martin Luther King, Jr., and the cities exploded. People talked about “long hot summers.” Yet riots of the same magnitude did not break out again until the “Rodney King” riots of 1992. Political violence has been (so far) sporadic and limited. Even terrorism has not made much of a dent on the American scene (praise be). Fear of terrorists slows up check-in at airports, but terrorist