Crime and Punishment

Fifteen years ago crime was, apart from the Vietnam War, our country’s most divisive political problem. Crime was on the rise, but our political leaders and opinion-makers could not agree on why, or how much, or who was to blame, or what should or could be done about it. J. Edgar Hoover had started the controversy in the early 1960s with a series of warnings that rising crime threatened the well-being of the nation. Hoover’s opponents in academia and elsewhere charged that he was crying wolf. There had been, they insisted, no substantial change in crime rates. As the decade wore on, however, it became apparent that a serious crime problem had developed and finally demanded attention.

Robbery increased sevenfold in two decades, and the transitive verb to mug entered the language. Mass murder became so common that multiple killings frequently were reported on the inside pages of the newspaper. In fact, the most horrifying aspect of this situation is the indifference with which it is now viewed by the nation. Skid-row drunks are tortured to death, young women are raped and strangled, whole families are murdered in their beds, while the rest ofusgoon about our business. By the fall of 1976, when an elderly couple in New York City were robbed and tortured twice in their own apartment and then hanged themselves, saying they didn’t want “to live in fear anymore,” very few people noticed. The slaughter and plunder of American citizens had become a basic part of the American way of life.

KS

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Karl Spence

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Fifteen years ago crime was, apart from the Vietnam War, our country’s most divisive political problem. Crime was on the rise, but our political leaders and opinion-makers could not agree on why, or how much, or who was to blame, or what should or could be done about it. J. Edgar Hoover had started the controversy in the early 1960s with a series of warnings that rising crime threatened the well-being of the nation. Hoover’s opponents in academia and elsewhere charged that he was crying wolf. There had been, they insisted, no substantial change in crime rates. As the decade wore on, however, it became apparent that a serious crime problem had developed and finally demanded attention.

Robbery increased sevenfold in two decades, and the transitive verb to mug entered the language. Mass murder became so common that multiple killings frequently were reported on the inside pages of the newspaper. In fact, the most horrifying aspect of this situation is the indifference with which it is now viewed by the nation. Skid-row drunks are tortured to death, young women are raped and strangled, whole families are murdered in their beds, while the rest ofusgoon about our business. By the fall of 1976, when an elderly couple in New York City were robbed and tortured twice in their own apartment and then hanged themselves, saying they didn’t want “to live in fear anymore,” very few people noticed. The slaughter and plunder of American citizens had become a basic part of the American way of life.