National Center for Policy Analysis

MONTH IN REVIEW

Crime
July,1996

FIGHTING CRIME ON A PERSONAL LEVEL

Some criminologists warn that honest Americans are giving in to crime through their attitudes -- changing their actions and perceptions of crime in order to deal with the everyday carnage.

But they caution that avoiding the problem is no substitute to dealing with it. Here are some suggestions to face criminality squarely:

Although reported crimes have fallen in some cities over the past few years, keep in mind that the incidence of serious crime remains many times what it was just a few decades ago when President Johnson's crime commission called 1965's total of 118,916 reported robberies "far too much for the health of the nation" -- and compare that figure to the 715,000 reported robberies in 1994.
Acknowledge the banal brutality of today's criminals -- one of whom (a l7-year-old man) recently smothered to death a 45-year old New Jersey school teacher because he had decided to steal her car as a birthday present to himself, killing her only after inquiring about the car's service record.
Hold the line on juvenile crime -- the tripling of gun homicides by juveniles since 1983, the doubling of arrest rates on weapons charges for males between 15 and 18 years.
Focus on prisoners' total criminal history; apologists to the contrary, 94 percent of all prisoners in 1991 were repeat or violent offenders;

Finally, they advise, remember that a society that becomes numb to crime and fails to express its natural outrage inevitably dulls its natural compassion for the innocent. Focus, they urge, on saving children -- who are most at risk of becoming criminals or crime victims.

Source: John J. DiIulio Jr. (Princeton), "Defining Criminality Up," Wall Street Journal, July 3, 1996.

WHERE CRIME DOESN'T PAY, BUT CRIMINALS DO

States across the nation are adopting laws which require that incarcerated criminals pay for everything from filing lawsuits to room and board. In 1995, states passed more than two dozen laws aimed at regaining at least some costs of incarceration.

Arizona requires an inmate to pay a utility fee if he has a television set or other major electrical appliance.
Connecticut and Missouri have laws forcing inmates to pay the expenses of their confinements.
New Hampshire requires prisoners to repay the cost of state-provided lawyers.
Texas demands part of an inmate's wages earned from any work program outside the prison.

Source: (no author) "Prisons Find a New Source of Financing: Their Inmates," New York Times, July 7, 1996.

BLACK CHURCH ARSON NO SUDDEN RECENT EPIDEMIC

While arson committed against a house of worship is a heinous crime, new information challenges the assumption that fires in black churches across the South are a recent racist phenomenon. This finding challenges the widely-accepted belief -- such as that asserted in USA Today, -- that a sharp rise in black church arsons started in 1994 and continues.

A closer scrutiny of the statistics and the nature of the events reveals that:

The numbers of fires chronicled by USA Today went up in part because two of the states in the paper's chart didn't start reporting data until 1993 and a third didn't until 1995 --naturally boosting more recent totals.
Among states that have compiled data going back to 1990, the number of black church arsons that year was two more than in 1994.
And the number in 1991 was the same as in 1995.

While the FBI does not keep such data, the National Fire Protection Association reports a dramatic drop in the number of all church arsons -- black and white included -- from 1,420 in 1980 to 520 in 1994.

It appears that a group called the National Center for Democratic Renewal, which was originally formed to challenge the Ku Klux Klan, has been fanning the church-burning issue out of proportion -- igniting more than 2,200 articles on the subject to date. The CDR claims there have been 90 arsons against black churches in nine Southern states since 1990, with numbers rising each year, reaching 35 by June 18, 1996. It also claims that every suspect arrested or detained was white.

But law enforcement officials in several Southern states reported that the CDR data regularly ignores fires set by blacks.
Moreover, it labels fires as arsons which clearly were not, and ignores fires that occurred early in the decade.

Source: Michael Fumento (Reason Magazine), "A Church Arson Epidemic? It's Smoke and Mirrors," Wall Street Journal, July 8, 1996.

GUNS AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Medical researchers have treated gun ownership and use as a public health issue, looking at the risk to the public at large from the presence of guns. However, social scientists question using an epidemiological approach, in which violence is treated like a disease and guns are treated like a cause. They suggest the situation is much more complex.

For example, studies by Arthur Kellermann, a physician, claim that gun-owning households, compared with gunless ones, are almost three times as likely to be the scene of a homicide and almost five times as likely to be the scene of a suicide. However, social scientists interpret his data differently:

Households in which homicides took place were more likely to contain a family member who abused alcohol or drugs and had a history of domestic violence.
These factors contributed to the likelihood of homicide independent of the presence of guns in the home.
Kellermann statistically manipulated his figures to account for these factors; however even he admits the possibility that some other factor might be present.

Critics also suggest that the victims in Kellermann's study may have gotten guns because they felt themselves threatened, which means they might have suffered higher homicide rates even if they hadnÕt bothered to arm themselves.

Further, suicide is prone to substitution -- although guns are the preferred instrument in the United States, a person bent on suicide can easily find a substitute. But Kellermann didn't account for victims without guns who went outside the home to kill themselves, say, by jumping off a bridge.

On the other hand, social scientists such as Gary Kleck, of Florida State University, have used surveys to estimate that guns are used (though not necessarily fired) in self-defense 2.5 million times each year. But "defensive gun use" is a broad term, so the data are open to different interpretations.

Source: Fred Guterl, "Gunslinging in America," Discover, May 1996.

IS TERRORISM GROWING IN THE U.S.?

The bombings at the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City, and now the possibility of terrorist involvement in the destruction of TWA's Flight 800, have Americans wondering if this country is the new world terrorist target and what lies ahead.

So far the evidence and condclusions are mixed.

U.S. data show that in recent years, acts of terrorism overall and those directed against this country have fallen.

Yet last year, for the first time, the U.S. made the top twenty list of nations with the highest levels of terrorism and other forms of political violence, according to Pinkerton Risk Assessment consultants.

The President has asked for $7.5 billion in federal law enforcement spending this year -- an increase of 17 percent -- and placed the FBI in charge of counterterrorism efforts. The bureau coordinates help from other agencies -- such as the Pentagon, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Secret Service.

When asked by Congress how much of its $270 billion is spent on counterterrorism, the pentagon said the figure was only $2 billion.

Clinton's antiterrorism policies are criticized on two fronts:

Some contend his team is focusing too much on catching terrorists after the fact and not enough on prevention beforehand.
And they say a new focus on terrorist groups in the U.S. diverts resources from the battle against foreign terror groups.

Charles Lichenstein, former deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Reagan, says current efforts miss the point. He believes the only recent effective U.S. counterterrorism effort occurred when President Reagan bombed Libya in 1986. For several years thereafter there was no sign of any serious incident sponsored by Libya.

Source: Jeff A. Taylor, "Is U.S. Now a Terrorist Target?" Investor's Business Daily, July 25, 1996.

MORE SMOKE THAN FIRE

Church burning by arsonists has declined sharply since 1980, according to the National Fire Protection Association. A total of 1,420 churches in the United States were torched in 1980 but that figure has fallen to less than 600 annually in recent years.

However, as a result of the increased media attention given to black church fires in recent months, experts point out:

More arsons at black churches will be reported in 1996 -- representing a greater percentage of arsons that occur -- whereas normally less than half of all church fires are reported.
Copycat arsonists have set more fires this year, in response to the publicity.
Almost the entire increase in arsons at black churches over the past 18 months is due to a few serial arsonists, according to a two-month USA Today investigation.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigated 49 fires that occurred in Southern churches (white, black and racially mixed) between January 1995 and June 30, 1996. It found that 10 of the fires were caused by accident and 39 were possible arsons. The ATF made arrests in nine cases; but in only two fires was there definite evidence of a racial motive, and the same two people are suspects in both fires.

Source: Michael Kelly, "Playing With Fire," New Yorker, July 15, 1996.

A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PIZZA DELIVERY?

Workers who deal directly with the public by exchanging money and delivering goods and services face the greatest risk of being killed, according to statistics. Yet many cities -- by using appeals to civil rights or by threatening to levy huge fines or snatch occupational licenses -- often try to intimidate or shame companies into sending their workers into all neighborhoods.

Twenty workers are murdered and 18,000 are assaulted each week -- with cab drivers dying most frequently.
In 1994, 84 cab drivers died at the hands of assailants.

Recently, San Francisco's board of supervisors passed the first law in the nation that prohibits businesses from refusing to deliver in high crime areas that otherwise would be within the businesses'delivery service areas. Although the law is said to be unenforceable, critics say it sets a troubling precedent. The law was proposed after the grandson of a black member of the board could not get a nearby Domino's Pizza to deliver to his home in a reputed crime territory.

Source: Bill Maxwell (St. Petersburg Times) "Crime Storm Watch and Home Delivery," Washington Times, July 27, 1996.

WHAT TO DO WITH JUVENILE CRIMINALS?

Some toughminded criminologists question whether juvenile offenders should be locked up with hardened criminal adults. They argue that such an approach would not solve the problem of rising juvenile crime and would be a step in the wrong direction.

But they do not deny that there is a vast and growing teen-criminal problem.

Of the 2.7 million juveniles arrested in 1994, more than one-third were under 15 years old.
Juvenile offenders were responsible for 14 percent of all violent crimes and one-quarter of all property crimes.
Black males 14 to 24 years old made up only 8 percent of the population in 1992, but they were 17 percent of the homicide victims that year and 30 percent of the offenders.
While five juveniles were murdered per day in 1980, the rate was seven per day by 1994 -- most of whom were 15 to 17 years old.

Experts predict that the number of juveniles arrested for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault will more than double by 2010.

The key is to identify at-risk children before they enter criminal activities and become, in the words of one researcher, "youngsters who afterwards show us the blank, unremorseful stare of a feral, presocial being."

The evidence shows that anti-social and delinquent tendencies emerge early in the lives of neglected, abused and unloved youngsters -- often by age nine.
They are less likely to commit violent crimes if they have responsible adults in their lives -- parents, teachers, coaches or the clergy -- to protect and guide them.
A study by the National Institute of Justice found that a child who suffers from abuse and neglect is 40 percent more likely to become delinquent.
About half of those in juvenile jails have at least one family member who was incarcerated.

The organization Public/Private Ventures, which studies and develops programs for youth, showed in a recent study that at-risk, low-income children who meet with a Big Brother or Big Sister three times a month for four hours each time were 46 percent less likely than their peers to start using illegal drugs and one-third less likely to assault someone.

Source: John J. DiIulio, Jr., "Stop Crime Where It Starts," New York Times, July 31, 1996.