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105
Little link
Similarly, the report concluded that «unemployment is unrelated to the total rate of offending for the
85 sub-groups in question (juvenile, youthful, and adult male offenders for both blacks and whites).» The study
also found little link between adult employment and juvenile offending. In short, changes in unemployment
forjuveniles,blacks, whites,and other sub-groups were not sound predictors of changes in crime rates. A
90 1980 article in the widely respected Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology also questioned the
relationship between econo mic indicators and crime rates. It concluded that «unemployment may affect the
crime rate, but even if it does, its general effect is too slight to be measured. Therefore, the proper inference
95
is that the effect of unemployment on crime is minimal at 95 best.» The Vera Institute of Justice, in a
review of the literature regarding employment and crime, found that, while much of the research cited
claims to establish a link between employment and crime, «empirical work ... suggests that the relationship
100 between unemployment and income variables and crime is not at all clear.»
Other studies have suggested that government intervention, in the form of employment programs, has
had little or no effect on recidivism. An evaluation of the Court Employment Project in New York City
105 found that the program had no effect on the reciivism rate of the carefully selected felony defendants who
participated. Similar projects in Texas and Georgia discovered no significant impact in either state on
property related crimes by participants. Looking at such programs, Vera concluded that «there is no clear
110 cut evidence about the relation ship between employment and crime in a program context.»
In Crime and Public Policy, published in 1983, Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman concluded that
«there is some difficulty in measuring the relationship between crime and unemployment,» and that
115 «various job experiments with individual crimes offer little optimism about the effect of job creation on the
behavior of persons already embarked on a career of crime.»
This brings me, finally, back to my initial point. With the common sense of our average citizens, we can
120 do something
about crime. It
is idle
to ask
whether employment programs,
diversion
schemes,
counseling,rehabilitation theories, or the substitution of psychiatrists for jailers will control crime.We, the
public, know the answer. They will not, have not, and can not. Only punishment will reduce crime. A study
125 of juvenile offenders in Chicago cited in 1980 by Harvard criminologist James Q. Wilson found that those
who were committed to the most restrictive environment were least likely to be arrested upon release.
130 The man in the street will tell you, if you ask him, that character, not economic status, is destiny. He
will also tell you how to deal effectively and justly with crime — hold people to account and, if they are
guilty, punish them. The wisdom of the ages abides in that common sense.
From: USA Today, March 1985.
BANALITY AND TERROR
by David Gelman with Rich Thomas
A think tank suggests that terrorism may become part of everyday life — numbing responses to it
In a controversial book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann more than two decades ago, the late Hannah
Arendt coined the phrase «the banality of evil» to describe the way in which a «terrifying normal» man
5
helped turn the extermination of people into bureaucratic routine. Unthinking but obedient, Eichmann under
orders took genocide to a higher level of efficiency — and in so doing, inured himself to all feelings of
repentance or even responsibility. But the unprecedented all too soon becomes precedent, Arendt wrote.
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Now a study has found a chilling analogue in the loose but global «infrastructure» that helps to sustain
terrorism worldwide. «To a certain extent,» says the report by Brian M.Jenkins for the Rand Corp.,
terrorism has become «institutionalized. «Some governments not only provide logistical backing and
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sanctuary but designate an agency to oversee relations with the terrorists. «Like any bureaucracy», says
Jenkins, chief terrorism analyst for the California-based think tank, «that agency competes for influence and
budget, promises results and resists dismantling.» Indeed, the report notes», a semipermanent subculture of
20
terrorism» is emerging
with overlapping personnel and some common sources of financing and weapons
supply.
Jenkins acknowledges that his findings, presented in early December to a seminar at Georgetown
25
University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, offer little hope of a respite from the current
epidemic of assassinations, bombings and hijackings. Despite some scattered successes in combating