NCJ Number
187296
Date Published
2001
Length
204 pages
Annotation
Based on ethnographic observations, analysis of census data, and historical research, this book argues that the current panic over crime has been manufactured by the media, law enforcement bureaucracies, and the private prison industry, leading to an unprecedented expansion of criminal justice bureaucracies.
Abstract
Although data show that for the last 25 years the crime rate in the United States has been steadily declining, most people believe that the United States is in an epidemic of crime in which their lives and property are seriously threatened by a growing number of violent predators. Consequently, Federal, State, and local government persist in increasing expenditures for crime control while cutting back in every other area of government activity. The most expensive criminal justice enterprise is the prison industry. In 1995 for the first time in U.S. history, there was a higher percentage of the U.S. population in prison or jail than in any other Western industrialized country. Politicians, notably Republicans and some Democrats (mostly southern), have barraged the public with "law and order" campaigns built on racist stereotypes of violent, criminal black men out of control and out of the reach of the law. The "War on Drugs" has played a major role in expanding law enforcement and corrections resources, while it has undermined civil rights and intensified the conflict between police and minority communities. Some suggestions for turning the tide away from unnecessary criminal justice expenditures include a reversal in overly severe sentences, accurate press reporting on crime data and trends, crime data collection by an independent agency, placing of law enforcement bureaucracies under civilian control, the use of alternatives to prosecution and incarceration, and an increase in the enforcement of laws against corporations. Chapter references and a subject index