Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [288]
Fear of crime also became a political fact in the postwar period; politics, as always, translated itself into law. We have already noted some of the results. One was an increased federal presence in the criminal justice system (see chapter 12). On the state and local levels there were louder and louder outcries that something had to be done; and politicians responded, at least at some symbolic or rhetorical level. Cities spent more on police and jails. Whether anything much came of all this, in the fragmented and chaotic conditions of American local governance, is an open question.9
Throughout the country, newspapers, movies, and TV spread the word about crime and violence—a misleading word, perhaps, but a powerful one. Even people who live in quiet suburban enclaves, or rural backwaters, are aware of what they consider the crime problem. They, too, may feel fearful and besieged: safe where they are perhaps, but conscious of a dangerous world beyond their doorsteps. As Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins have pointed out, the level of violent crime is unlikely “in the real world,” to go low enough “to abate the public’s fear of assault or criminals.” Indeed, South Dakota, “with crime rates about one-tenth that of, say, New York or North Carolina,” felt impelled to enact death penalty legislation in the 1970s.10
There are, of course, still many people who plead for a more humane system, and who believe that criminals can be rehabilitated. But the predominant call is for tougher laws, more and longer sentences, more and bigger prisons. In the 1980s, “advances” in humanizing criminal justice, in the style of the Warren Court, became difficult or perhaps impossible. The prison population rose; it doubled and tripled.11 Whenever voters got a chance to express themselves, they almost invariably cast ballots for law and order, toughness, stringency—not for due process or reform. In earlier chapters, we have seen sign after sign of this backlash.
The Question of Violence
Why is the United States such a violent country? Why is there so much serious crime? Why are there so many violators—men (and a few women) who take other people’s property, intrude on their homes, assault their bodies, and even take their lives? What is it about our society that breeds this epidemic of violent crime?
Is American history, tradition, experience to blame? There is a lot of talk about the legacy of frontier violence. Does violence stem from these primal conditions? This was a new, raw, macho country; traditional authority was weak; conditions favored the violent and the strong. In fact, the question is a complicated one. There is some doubt whether the frontier was violent at all—or if it was, whether this was the same kind of violence as modern violence.
This question is raised by Roger McGrath, in his study of two towns of the old Wild West, Bodie, California, and Aurora, Nevada (see chapter 8). There was a good deal of shooting, fighting, and hell-raising in these towns, but it was confined to “men fighting men.” Anybody outside the circle of macho fighters was more or less safe.12 It was, in short, patterned violence, restricted violence; this kind of violence sends no chills of fear down the spine of the average person. Most people can buy immunity, just by staying on the sidelines or opting out.
But if this was, in fact, the case, it is no longer true. It is also worth pointing out that there is another historical pattern: domestic violence—crimes of passion and hatred, and family brutality. These account for most homicides, even today. In Marvin Wolfgang’s classic study of violent deaths in Philadelphia, for the period 1948 through 1952, only 12.2 percent of the 550 homicides for which the killer was known were committed against “strangers,” and 1.1 percent against “innocent bystanders.” The big categories of victims included “close friends” (28.2 percent), members of the family (24.7 percent), and substantial numbers of “acquaintances,