Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [296]
But the solutions do not come. What is the reason? It must be (people think) that the system is too flaccid. More police, more prisons, more iron fists: that is the ticket. Politicians, as we have seen, eagerly batten on these views. Cast your ballot for X and he will light a fire under the system. After election, disillusionment invariably sets in.
The sad fact is that no amount of tinkering, no amount of jail building or amendments to penal codes will do the trick, at least not in this society. This is so for a number of reasons. In the first place, we cannot and will not adopt truly savage, draconian measures. As we pointed out, the death penalty might be a good deterrent if we used it as Hitler or Stalin did, with utter ruthlessness and speed. If we routinely cut off the hands of thieves, this might stop thievery. But these measures are impossible in the United States; cutting off hands is out of the question, and as far as the death penalty is concerned, it takes years to drag each individual wretch from court to death row to appellate court to the place of execution; and I doubt that most people really regret this situation, whatever they may say.36
On the other hand, certain kinds of stem measures are impossible because the law-and-order crowd itself refuses to countenance them: gun control is an excellent example. Sixty percent of the people who were asked felt that “drugs” were the factor “most responsible for crime in the United States today.”37 Surely something should be done; or so people think. But drug policy has entered a state of pure paralysis. Legalization is apparently out of the question, politically, and so is real toughness (sealing the borders or beheading pushers).
In my view, the “crime problem” flows largely from changes in the culture itself; it is part of us, our evil twin, our shadow; our own society produced it. It has been a central theme of this book that criminal justice systems are organic, rooted in society. Crime is no different. It is part of the American story, the American fabric. Perhaps—just perhaps—the siege of crime may be the price we pay for a brash, self-loving, relatively free and open society.
Of course, this does not mean raising the flag of surrender—giving up the war against crime. There are certainly things we can do, and ought to do. Some people think a full-employment program for young men with nothing to do would do wonders in the fight against crime. This is probably a shade naive, but it may not be a bad idea nonetheless. Surely some young men (and women) would choose a decent job over a life of crime if we gave them half a chance. We can think of other social remedies—education, training, social reforms. But, alas, very few measures we might imagine are likely to turn into reality. For one thing, nobody seems to want to put up the money.
For this reason, I fear, we are likely to bump along more or less as we are. The siege of crime and all the misery it brings, both to those who commit it and those who are victimized, is a high price to pay for our liberty. It is a cost that is badly and unfairly distributed. But for now, at least, there may be nothing to do but grit our teeth and pay the price.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN THE UNITED STATES HAS BEEN RATHER badly neglected; it is not clear why. Legal history in general has also suffered from neglect, but this field has lately shown great signs of growth; the same is true of social history in general. Criminal