NCJ Number
130068
Date Published
1991
Length
227 pages
Annotation
Based on a single case study of the pseudonymous community called "Cedar City," a medium-sized city in the western United States, this book explores how society thinks about the nature, causes, and consequences of street crime; how these perceptions develop and change; and how they are politicized.
Abstract
The study examined criminal justice records, demographic changes, the salience of the crime issue in local elections, the impact of the police regime on major policy indicators, the number of crime articles, and policy-relevant and policy-controversial crime reporting. The findings are generally unequivocal and can be expressed in three propositions. First, the politicization of criminological discourse tends to develop in and contribute to a punitive ethos. Second, the agencies of criminal process are well insulated from this punitive political climate, so the policy response to politicization is sluggish, unpredictable, and not necessarily punitive. There are, however, significant constraints on the resultant discontinuities between ethos and policy. Both punitive and nonpunitive policies remain well within the bounds of volitional criminology, thus leading to the third proposition; i.e., structural interpretations of deviant behavior are pervasively and consistently marginalized in both political discourse and criminal process. 11 tables, 6 figures, chapter notes, an 85-item bibliography, and a subject index