Crime and Politics : Big Government’s Erratic Campaign for Law and Order

Why has America experienced an explosion in crime rates since 1960? Why has the crime rate dropped in recent years? Though politicians are always ready both to take the credit for crime reduction and to exploit grisly headlines for short-term political gain, these questions remain among the most important – and most difficult to answer – in America today. In this text, journalist Ted Gest gives readers the inside story of how crime policy is formulated inside the Washington beltway and state capitols, explains why there has been cycle after cycle of ineffective federal legislation, and where promising reforms might lead us in the future. Gest examines how politicians first made crime a national rather than a local issue, beginning with Lyndon Johnson’s crime commission and the landmark anti-crime law of 1968 and continuing right up to such present-day measures as “three strikes” laws, mandatory sentencing, and community policing. He exposes a lack of consistent leadership, backroom partisan politics, and the rush to embrace simplistic solutions as the main causes for why federal and state crime programmes have failed to make our streets safe.