Posted on 09/02/2017 6:44:28 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The history of academic criminology is one of grand pronouncements that dont often prove out in the real world. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, criminologists demanded that public policy attack the root causes of crime, such as poverty and racism. Without solving these problems, they argued, we could not expect to fight crime effectively. On this thinking, billions of taxpayer dollars poured into ambitious social programsyet crime went up, not down. In the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s, as crime rates continued to spike, criminologists proceeded to tell us that the police could do little to cut crime, and that locking up the felons, drug dealers, and gang leaders who committed much of the nations criminal violence wouldnt work, either.
These views were shown to be false, too, but they were held so pervasively across the profession that, when political scientist James Q. Wilson called for selective incapacitation of violent repeat offenders, he found himself ostracized by his peers, who resorted to ad hominem attacks on his character and motivations. Wilsons work was ignored by awards committees, and criminological reviews of his books, especially Thinking About Crime and Crime and Human Nature, were almost universally negative. In the real-world policy arena, however, Wilson attained significant influence: the Broken Windows theory of policing and public order, which Wilson developed with criminologist George Kelling, became a key part of the proactive policing strategies that would be largely responsible for the great crime decline starting in the mid-1990s.
In short, while academic criminology has had much to say about crime, most of it has been wrong. How can an academic discipline be so wrongheaded? And should we listen to criminologists today when, say, they call for prisons to be emptied.....
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
This is secular leftists trying to do on mortal power what only the church can do.
I don’t criticize the sentiment nearly as much as the method.
what they don’t say is that most crime is committed by certain groups....
Its impossible to address crime without addressing its inverse relationship to personal virtue. Societies are made up of individuals; abandon virtue as a society and watch your society unravel.
In simplest terms, crime can be tied pretty directly to broken families and substance abuse. Broken families and substance abuse.
It isn’t poverty. Poor neighborhoods, in a society in which families are intact and virtue is the norm, are as safe as any other.
Criminology is dominated by liberal academics.
Their theories contradict real world experience.
But that’s okay, because for them, criminals aren’t the problem.
Society is the problem.
Even “virtue” is a precarious thing without tying it to the Lord.
You might have the best instruments in the world in a room, but if it’s rank amateurs playing on them, you won’t get the wonderful sound of the Philadelphia Philharmonic.
Society has been a problem — for God — ever since the fall of humanity.
I often like to say, the root social problem is too few Christians per square mile.
You mean “midnight basketball” didn’t work?? I’d guess that ghetto basketball is taking a backseat to drivebys.
> I often like to say, the root social problem is too few Christians per square mile.
Tons of Christians per square mile in the Philippines, sky high crime rates. Almost no Christians in Japan and crime is almost nonexistent. What Japan has and the Philippines does not is order. To establish order you have to brutal on those who refuse it which is what Rodrigo Duterte is doing to the Philippines right now.
Save for later
This is my field - the author is spot on!
Albert Einstein
Leftists are a cancer, they foul everything they touch. We do nothing to stop it, so our country is a dump.
Criminal activity is a personal choice, period.
I’m guessing the question is “Are blacks prone to committing robbery and murder due to genetics or culture?”
Is this going to impact my investment in the midnight basketball dealership?
I hope the professors are fully tenured, the “push back” is going to be unbelievable.
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