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America's contradictory attitudes toward crime: repellent danger versus media glamorization.

For more than two decades, the United States has been at war with street crime, but we have precious little to show for it. Our obsession with punishment at the expense of, indeed to the exclusion of, prevention is not just futile but criminogenic and divisive. This article explains what is problematic about our indiscriminately punitive response to street crime and explores the political forces driving these self-defeating policies. What emerges is an understanding of the politics of street crime that is rooted less in the fear of crime than in a variety of anxieties that transcend street crime but are affectively related to it. Criminals provide a convenient target for the anger that is widely felt, but is not quite appropriate to express, with respect to unwelcome changes in race relations, employment opportunities, homelessness, and the like. To serve their own distinct but convergent purposes, the media, the public, and the politicians all contribute to the perpetuation of our perverse approach to controlling street crime. While there are countervailing forces at work, they seem unlikely to prevail in the foreseeable future.

Explains what is problematic about the indiscriminately punitive response to street crime in the US, & explores the political forces driving these self-defeating policies. What emerges is an understanding of the politics of street crime that is rooted less in the fear of crime than in a variety of anxieties that transcend street crime but are affectively related to it. Criminals provide a convenient target for the anger that is widely felt, but is not quite appropriate to express, with respect to unwelcome changes in race relations, employment opportunities, homelessness, etc. To serve their own distinct but convergent purposes, the media, the public, & the politicians all contribute to the perpetuation of a perverse approach to controlling street crime. 1 Table, 1 Figure. Adapted from the source document.

The politicization of street crime in "Cedar City" (pseudonym) during 1964-1980 is examined using three kinds of data: interviews (N not specified) with criminal process professionals & local political leaders; content coding of newspaper reporting of crime; & analysis of crime rates & voting patterns. While during this period, street crime became a matter of public anxiety & a prominent political issue in the US, there was surprisingly little politicization of it in Cedar City. The findings presented here do not have to do with the peculiarities of Cedar City, but with the key distinction between extensive politicization of street crime at the national level & limited politicization at the local level. At the latter, politicians & criminal process professionals must deal directly with street crime & with a divided public, & politicization tends to create more problems than it resolves. At the national level, where the war on street crime is almost exclusively a symbolic activity uniting "us" (the law abiding) against "them" (the criminals), politicization resonates very well with the public & is, thus, a tempting target of opportunity. 6 Tables, 2 Figures, 28 References. AA