CRIME: LAW AND ORDER

• Share

(5 of 6)

The effectiveness of gun laws that are stricter is no easier to compute. In the three cities with the most dramatic recent declines in homicide--New York, Kansas City and Houston--police have very aggressive strategies for separating felons from their firearms and stemming the flow of cheap, illegal handguns. Chicago is currently celebrating a decline in homicides from 930 in 1994 to 823 last year. Police think part of the reason might be that Illinois' new, stricter penalties for felonies involving a firearm have persuaded many gang members and drug dealers to leave the guns at home. "We'll arrest a whole crew and still find no guns," says Paul Jenkins, the Chicago police department's director of news affairs. But while the anecdotal evidence is suggestive, it is nothing like firm. "If we knew the reason for success, we'd do a lot more of it," says Jenkins. "We'd bottle it."

For now, keep the bottles uncorked. Talk to most experts in law enforcement, and they soon complain about the paucity of solid research to identify what works against crime. Norval Morris, a professor of law and criminology at the University of Chicago, compares the state of knowledge in his field to that in medicine earlier in the century, when doctors were commonly in the dark as to whether their treatments worked, or why. "Testing the consequences [for crime] of different drug policies, different housing practices, different police practices--it's very, very rarely done," he says.

In the 1988 presidential election, when rising crime was an issue, Willie Horton became the wanted-poster child who helped elect George Bush. In 1992 Bill Clinton neutralized the Republican advantage by positioning himself as a tough-on-crime Democrat who favored the death penalty and would put 100,000 new police officers on the streets. In an interview with Time, Clinton said last week that the country has embarked on a historic change: "What's happening now across America essentially closes the door on an era that began with the murder of Kitty Genovese 30 years ago." In that milestone episode of public indifference, Genovese, a young New Yorker, was murdered while dozens of people ignored her screams for help. "I think now we have ended both the isolation of the police from the community and the idea that the community doesn't have a responsibility to work with the police or with its neighbors."

Clinton's tough talk on crime helped him win back some of the Reagan Democrats who had fled the party. But with crime rates falling, the issue may lose some of the importance it had for voters two years ago. Though Americans still tell pollsters that crime is at the top of their concerns, that may change as lagging perceptions catch up to new realities. Meanwhile, the President sees the political advantage as his. Though crime has hardly been mentioned in the Republican primaries, the Clinton-Gore Re-Election Committee spent a surprising $2.4 million last summer on TV spots that ran in 24 states, touting the President's record on crime.