Social sciences aid crime evaluation
Bv JOSE FONSECA
A former president of the United States once said that crime has become a malignant enemy in America's midst.
In fact, America is the most criminal nation in the world, in terms of statistical data. Americans commit twice as many assaults as Frenchmen, three times more rapes than Italians and five times more mufders than Englishmen.
What are the reasons for such a disproportional amount of criminality? From the FBI crime reports one can see the incidence of most crimes of violence, and also of non-violent crimes in a lesser degree, is correlated with the size of the city.
"The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society," edited in 1967 by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, shows crime associated with poverty, racial antagonism, family breakdown or the restlessness of young people.
Crimes increase
In the period from 1964 to 1965 the Commission found that rates of offenses per 100,000 population had increased from 4.8 to 5.1 willful homicides, 10.7 to 11.6 forcible rapes, 58.4 to 61.4 robberies, 101.8 to 106.6 aggravated assaults, 580.4 to 605.3 burglaries, 368.2 to 393.3 larceny cases of $50 and over, 242.0 to 251.0 motor vehicle thefts, 175.7 to 184.7 total crimes against persons, and 1,190.6 to 1,249.6 total property crimes.
These statistics are offenses known to the police. A large number of offenses go undetected. The age group from 15 to 17 was proportionately the most heavily involved in this increase of crime—an indication of the seriousness of juvenile delinquency.
Obviously, a general breakdown of standards is underway. Family ties are more easily broken: Churches have lost their controlling effects on the behavior of their members. Middle class values no longer appeal to youth. The display of corruption enacted by the adult world on all levels, from official to social, attest to a confusion of ends and practice. A reassertion of ethical standards would seem to be inevitable, but in the meantime greater social unrest and violence is indicated.
Crime causes
A great number of sociologists argue that lower class culture creates an environment which generates delinquency and crime. (The term "culture" relates to the aggregation of persons.) In spite of all the numbers and "findings," however there is no single statement that tells us the effect of population density on the distribution of mental illness and crime.
On the other hand, a serious semantical disagreement seems to exist when one mentions crime and mental illness. Thomas S. Caszz, professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York in Syracuse, says that mental illness is a myth, although he does not reject any facts of human behavior.
He believes that myth does not imply denying facts but reallocating them. One could define mental illness as a disease of the brain whose predominant symptoms are abnormalities of behavior, or as a functional or psychological disorder.
Society determines law
However, the patterns of behavior are determined by society and when a specific act is defined as criminal the crime is being defined by the Criminal Law, which can vary from one to another society.
Therefore, it is not always wise to compare behavioral patterns between nations without
considering those differences. The still primitive methodology of social research and the great complexity of variables constrains the search for new knowledge.
Social scientist Kenneth Polk sees the failure to find a consistent and meaningful relationship between the economic status characteristics of areas, population density, delinquency and crime as responsible for a "curious and major disjunction of 'facts' and 'theory' in delinquency and crime research." To the variables presented by Polk, one could easily add "mental illness."
Data not true measure
The fact is that, as far as our present knowledge goes, it is not possible to measure delinquency, or crime, or mental illness in terms of statistical data. What would happen if half of the world population became color-blind? What then would be considered yellow or green? Would this change the very nature of the colors?
A similar thing is happening with attempts to study crime. There is no semantical agreement over the term, and no scientific conclusion stays unchallenged for a long period of time. However, few people engaged in the social sciences disagree that the knowledge of social problems involves psychobiological, socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Knowing individual
In other words, to deal with a "deviant" individual it is necessary to know the person, the family, the ethnic or religious group and the environment in which he moves. Czasz, who seems to be a rather skeptical psychiatrist, puts witchcraft with crime and mental illness, under the label of "socially threatening behavior." Witchcraft receives theological sanctions, crime is handled by means of judicial sanctions and mental illness receives psychiatric sanctions.
"I do not believe," he says, "that insanity should be an 'excusing condition' for crime. Law breakers, irrespective of their 'mental health,' ought to be treated as offenders."
Statements like this, regardless of their intrinsic values, are often subject to misinterpretation. Czasz does not deny that a mentally ill person should be treated properly, and receive psychiatric care. But for many people a law breaker should simply be punished.
The concept of crime and punishment seems to be oddly mixed with American social values. People hold rigid and often simplistic attitudes toward the problem. It is not possible any more to look at crime in a narrow, inaccurate and superficial way, if one wants a workable solution for it.
Firm attitudes held
This inaccuracy is not the same that is found in social research, but a product of a rather anti-scientific attitude. The diversity of crime and delinquency requires a more realistic and sophisticated understanding of what criminal and delinquent behavior represents.
Law enforcement by itself will not solve the problem. There are, of course, those who see law enforcement as the only solution. For them what is important is to keep the "law-abiding" citizens from the evil of crime by simply isolating from society the "criminal" citizens.
This is a kind of simplistic solution which might well create a bigger problem. The public may be excited over a particular issue such as the ABM defense system, but it ends to ignore the larger problems which gave rise to it. This theory goes as far
What can society do about it? It can attempt to reduce what are considered the underlying causes of crime—variously identified as slums, poverty, discrimination, and flawed family relationships. Society can also try to strengthen and reform law enforcement and the administration of justice, so more of those who might commit crimes are deterred, more of those who commit crimes are caught, and more of those who are caught are dealt with in such ways that they do not commit further crimes.
These two approaches are not either/or alternatives. But in any case, the action which the community or the society in general initiates will condition the responses and the reactions of those who are apprehended or dealt with.
Can crime be curbed?
Is it really possible to reduce crime rates? It all depends on the approach to the problem. Some experts say that the first step toward reducing crime rates is to want to reduce crime rates. In short they say: do something about it. But this is another simplistic statement, since it is necessary to ask the right questions at the right time and know what to do before hand.
The questions presented by the President of the United States to the National Crime Commission in 1967, for example, became known in many areas of social research as "wrong questions."
They were stated as follows: 1. Why is drug addiction increasing among young people? 2. Why does organized crime continue to expand? 3. Why do one-third of parolees revert to crime? 4. Why does one man break the law while another living in the same circumstances does not? 5. Why uses juvenile delinquency know no economic or educational boundaries?
Premises proved false
All five premises have been challenged and some of them have been proved wrong, as in the case of drug addiction, which is not increasing and does not cause crime, according to some social scientists. It is also believed that no man lives in the same circumstances when the entire environmental complex is considered. In the case of juvenile delinquency, it was shown that persistent delinquency is the case of the underprivileged, une educated segments of American society.
Question number three was challenged on the grounds of "good results any way" with the parolees. Most states now practice "parole prediction," using statistical tables to forecast a man's performance on parole rather accurately. In Kansas only 7 per cent of parolees with favorable prediction violated their trust, while more than three-fourths of those regarded as bad risks reverted to crime.
Solution possible
Whether there is agreement over the terminology used by the social sciences, however, it is possible to get closer to a solution. Deviant behavior is definitely a phenomenon which overlaps the boundaries of the individual and extends into the realm of society.
At the same time, since society regulates and defines deviant behavior, it is proper to look for some possible inadecquency in the penal system, in the criminal law and, most of all, to have an open-minded attitude about the social aspects of this deviant behavior.
A quiet, almost unreported revolution is already happening within the penal system of the United States. The limited, but good results are just a proof that the social sciences, with all their deficiencies, can benefit society.
U.S. may take all silver out of coins
WASHINGTON (UPI) — The Treasury Department announced yesterday it will recommend taking all silver out of future U.S. coins—including a new proposed "silver" dollar that could bear the likeness of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Treasury Secretary David M. Kennedy said he will ask Congress to authorize the minting of both nonsilver dollars and half dollars along with the sale of $2.9 million in rare Carson City silver dollars as collectors items.
The only U.S. coin currently in production containing silver is the "Kennedy" half dollar, which includes 40 per cent silver.
Kennedy made his statement to a meeting of the U.S. Coinage Commission which advises the
18 KANSAN May 13 1969
back as Alexis de Tocqueville. Crime is one of these many particular problems.
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government on coinage policy.
Eggers said, however, the commission took no action on the suggestion and no decision has been made on the final design of the new dollar coin.
Treasury General Counsel Paul W. Eggers said the commission also discussed a suggestion the new nonsilver dollar bear a likeness of former President Eisenhower instead of the traditional heat of Miss Liberty.
"The size would have to be
the same as the old silver dollars because we intend to use them as substitutes for vending machine use." Eggers said.
He explained the Treasury Department had been under increasing pressure to produce a dollar coin to head off the growing use of dollar tokens used by resort hotels in the West.
"We want coins that will be in circulation in commerce," Eggers said.
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