Legal Commentary

Writing here in The New Republic, Robert Gordon has a notable commentary entitled "Criminal Intent: The presidential candidates need to stop ignoring America's crime problem ? and start considering innovative solutions."  Here is how the commentary begins:

Here's a funny thing about this presidential campaign season: Two crime dramas ? "The Wire" and "Law & Order" ? have gotten more attention than actual crime.  Twenty years ago, with the crack epidemic peaking, George Bush rode to victory using Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis.  Now, with the violent crime rate one-third lower, Republicans no longer try to paint Democrats as soft on crime, and Democrats no longer feel the need to prove themselves tough on the issue.  Campus shootings in Virginia and Illinois have barely registered politically, and President Bush's evisceration of aid to local cops has received little attention on the campaign trail. Even Rudy Giuliani, who made his name fighting murder and mayhem in New York, included nothing on crime among his major campaign planks.

Although the end of law-and-order demagoguery is welcome, America still has a crime problem ? or, rather, two crime problems.  On one hand, the crime drop of the 1990s has ended, without delivering real relief to many communities.  For example, while murder is down dramatically in New York and Chicago, homicide rates in Baltimore and Detroit are about the same as in 1995 ? and 25 percent higher than New York's rate at its 1990 peak. In many inner cities, violence and the fear of violence remain central facts of life that drive away jobs, small businesses, and successful families. Overall, the country's homicide rate is still three times higher than England's or Australia's, and twice that of Canada. According to the University of Chicago's Jens Ludwig, crime costs the United States on the order of $2 trillion a year.

At the same time, America's incarceration rate ? the highest on earth ? continues to balloon. According to a recent report from the Pew Center on the States, one in 100 U.S. adults is now behind bars, the largest percentage in our history.  The racial imbalance is even more disturbing: One in 106 white men is in prison, compared to one in 15 African-American men.  Overall, our incarceration rate is four times higher than it was in 1980, and more than five times that of England or Canada.

This commentary makes an astute observation about the apparent eagerness for the 2008 campaign to ignore crime and punishment issues.  However, the essay fails to take Bill Clinton to task for transforming the Democratic Party into a party that has ? in my view, wrongly ? concluded that "law-and-order demagoguery" is essential to winning elections. 

Though this commentary starts by noting the Willie Horton ad that played a role in the 1988 Bush-Dukakis election, it fails to highlight that Bill Clinton in 1992 and throughout his presidency (directly and indirectly) urged Democrats to be involved in "law-and-order demagoguery."  It is against this backdrop that it was so telling and so sad that Senator Hillary Clinton this year was the only Democrat to speak out against the retroactivity of the crack guidelines.  That choice, in my opinion, showed that Senator Clinton still believe that electoral success (even against fellow Democrats) is to be achieved through "law-and-order demagoguery."

Give these realities, it may be an good that so far none of the major Presidential candidates are talking about crime and punishment issues.  The Clintonian approach now seems to be to use these issues as a wedge to beat up on fellow Democrats, and that approach likely ensures that we get policies and politics (at least at the national level) that contribute to both the crime problems that the TNR piece discusses.   

Some SL&P posts on crime and punishment and the 2008 campaign:

• How the media can do better: ask the candidates tough crime and punishment questions
• Might crime and punishment finally start drawing the attention of the candidates and the media
• "Where candidates stand on crime, death penalty"
• Interesting commentary on 2008 politics of death
• Candidates asked "what would Jesus do" about the death penalty
• Clinton and Obama, crime and punishment
• A retroactive litmus test on leading Democratic candidates
• Is Senator Clinton to the right of Justice Scalia on sentencing issues?
• Race, class and criminal justice in campaign 2008
• Politics and the war on drugs 
• Should criminal justice reform be the new civil rights movement?   
• Aren't extreme sentences and mass incarceration a "tired philosophy that trusts in government more than people"?

Cross-posted at SL&P