Up in Arms Over Crime

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The public's fear and frustration have been felt by politicians and legislators at all levels, from Pennsylvania Avenue to Main Street. No one wants to be seen as soft on crime or on criminals. Ronald Reagan has led a conservative Administration that has championed efforts to limit the rights of criminal suspects and expand those of victims. Democrats Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro made the reduction of crime an element of their plea to return to "family values." Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal members of the Senate, was a leading sponsor of the most sweeping federal anticrime measure in the past 16 years. Enacted last October, the revision of the criminal code permits pretrial detention of "dangerous" defendants, increases penalties for major drug offenses and eliminates wide disparities in sentences for people who commit similar crimes. Harvard Professor of Government James Q. Wilson's celebrated reference to New York could be applied nationally when it comes to crime: "There are no more liberals . . . They've all been mugged."

The slug-the-thugs attitude is evident in the judiciary as well. The U.S. Supreme Court now allows judges to admit illegally seized evidence as long as the police acted "in good faith." The Justices also have weakened the Miranda protections under which suspects must be granted counsel before answering police questions. Since the court's 1976 decision allowing capital punishment, 37 states have resumed executions. Pretrial detention of potentially violent defendants is now permitted in different forms in some 30 states.

The national impulse to strike back at criminals is growing at a time, oddly enough, when reported crime rates are declining (see chart). An important reason: the post-World War II baby boomers have moved out of their late teens, the most crime-prone age, and are now in their 20s or older. Experts predict that crime rates will continue to fall as this group ages. Harvard's Wilson thinks he has a campaign promise that every candidate can keep: "Elect me, and you will see the crime rate go down."

If violent crime is on the decline, is the citizen outcry misplaced? Most analysts say no. They contend that the three-point drop has little practical impact on individuals living in crime-ridden areas. Perceptions of the danger come more from reading about crime in local newspapers or hearing about it from neighbors. "People experience crime in terms of their vicarious personal lives, not in terms of statistics," notes Douglas Thomson, a criminal-justice-system researcher at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Even with the decline, murder in the U.S. is more prevalent than in other industrial democracies. The violent crime rate in New York City was, in fact, 22 times that of Tokyo in 1983. Only the Soviet Union and South Africa imprison their populations at higher rates than the U.S.