Picture crime as the upper portion of a gradually rising mountain of lawlessness. The low foothills of this mountain are traffic violations too numerous to count — no one in fact does so at the national level. Next come offenses serious enough to merit arrest. The bulk of all arrests, however — for some 20 broad categories — are not serious enough to make it into the crime rate r…
This chapter focuses on violent crimes. These are the ones that send a chill down the spine. Violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault. After two and a half decades of high rates of violent crime, trends in all violent crimes during the late 1990s have been down. Fewer of such crimes are being committed. The first panels in this chapter provide an overview…
You suddenly realize your purse is missing. You come home from work and the television is gone. As you walk though the mall parking lot, searching for your vehicle, you realize someone actually has stolen it. These are called property crimes: larcenies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts. By one very conservative estimate, annual losses are thought to exceed at least $15 billion. Such crimes have…
Roughly 80% of crime never makes it into the crime rate. Such offenses include fraud, prostitution, sex offenses, weapons, drugs, gambling, drunk driving, and vagrancy. Many of these offenses have been addressed in other chapters. Gun possession is covered in Chapter 2 with violent crime. Fraud has been included with property crime in Chapter 3. Juvenile crimes — truancy and runaways, for ex…
Our children are our future. Can we keep them safe? Are we safe from them? This chapter explores the topics of children as victims, as aggressors, and as consumers of pop culture in the form of violent video games. We begin with a look at school safety to determine how realistic are our fears for our children. Back in the 1950s we built bomb shelters to protect them against alien attacks. Somewher…
Much as the post-war Baby Boom has had an indelible impact on the demographics, economics, and mores of the 20th century, so also the War on Drugs has had, and continues to have, a significantly uneven influence on "crime and justice," the subject of this volume. Attempts at controlling the trade in illegal substances, and to prevent people from using drugs, is accounting for about a fifth of all …
No one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance. Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d) offers one definition: "The premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." (Noncombatants are generally defined as civilians and unarmed military personnel…
Less than 1 million men and women are sworn law enforcement officers — carry a firearm and have the ability to make arrests. People depend on them to protect property, save lives, and to uphold the law. This chapter will examine law enforcement officers and the issues surrounding this profession. As stated through this book, the crime rate fell dramatically over the last two decades. In earl…
Nearly two million people (one out of every 142 Americans) welcomed the millennium in the confines of an American correctional institution, ending the most punishing decade in American history. With about 5% of the world's population, America has the distinction of housing about one-quarter of the world's prisoners in what may well be the world's largest prison system. This chapter begins by delin…
The legal system is the whole apparatus that dispenses justice. Is our legal system in trouble? We will try to answer that question by looking at how criminal cases are handled, since crime is near the top of the list of Americans' concerns. Our first panels address two issues: Is the criminal justice system too overburdened to guarantee a speedy trial? And: What is the likelihood of a person bein…
