Real Crime Prevention
Our political system in America encourages superficial solutions to complex problems. Politicians looking to get re-elected every two to four years need catchy slogans that have an immediate visceral appeal to easily distracted voters. When it comes to violent crime, “get tough” is the slogan. Everyone immediately knows that this means long prison sentences or death for the predators we hear about every night on TV. Anyone proposing an alternative solution is derisively called a “bleeding heart liberal.” We should ignore the political posturing for once and focus on the most effective way of dealing with the problem.
It is survival of the toughest in American penitentiaries. Finishing a sentence and walking out of prison is like graduating from crime school. After convicts spend a few years in the system, they harden into lean, mean, tattooed fighting machines. These people have plunged head first into a life of crime and for the vast majority of them, there’s no turning back. That’s why we need to aggressively intervene in the lives of at risk children before they turn to violent crime as a way of life.
When a man comes home at night and punches his wife, he’s teaching his children that it is OK for a man to physically assault his wife. When a woman threatens her husband with a weapon, she’s teaching her children that it’s all right for a woman to threaten her husband while brandishing a weapon. Parents who do these things are raising monsters. They have no right to teach their children these lessons. Children raised with abuse grow up to be abusive as adults. A strong public campaign to end domestic violence will go a long ways toward ending violent crime in general.
Here are links to organizations working to protect at risk children: International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Stand Up for Kids, Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute and The Safe Side.
violent crime, domestic violence, domestic abuse, get tough, crime prevention, prison, recidivism, abused children
October 21st, 2007 at 4:59 am
[...] These skills won’t help juvenile delinquents. At risk kids don’t need to carry around 60 pound packs or shoot someone from a distance of a hundred yards. These kids need life skills. They need to know how to keep their cool in stressful situations. They need to learn how to handle bad news without resorting to violence. And they need to know how to maintain gainful employment so that they can make a decent life for themselves. You can’t teach youngsters these lessons through physical or verbal abuse. [...]
December 7th, 2007 at 12:50 am
[...] just read an excellent blog post by Bob Betzen about real crime prevention. While explaining the failure of incarceration to rehabilitate criminals, he says a line that had [...]