Were the politicization of crime statistics merely a matter of one bureaucracy fiddling with data to support their interests it would perhaps be possible to ignore it as "good enough for government work."
Unfortunately, when the subject is crime, the consequences of mis-reporting data reverberate in the lives of people throughout the country. Crime in the public image in the United States is not racially neutral. Crimes in the media and the view of the general public are acts committed by young black men.
Never mind that more serious crimes daily occur at corporate headquarters, banks and on Wall Street. The public image is of violent, psychopathic, young black males.
Thus for the Department of Justice to distort the frequency and seriousness of crime is to accuse the African American community of being a dangerous class in need of massive efforts to control them (Chambliss, 1994).
As a consequence of generating fear, the gap between the white and black communities grows. People cross streets when they see black men walking on their side of the street. Mothers hurry to put their children in the car and lock the doors.
The quality of life for everyone is negatively effected as parents put fear into their children from an early age. Middle and upper class children are shuttled to and from the mall rather than letting them ride the bus or walk home after dark even in neighborhoods that rarely experience any type of crime. The independence of women is severely curtailed as they are afraid to walk alone and therefore become dependent on having a man to escort them, or at least other women.
By perpetuating the myth of "crime out of control" and the need for massive interventions on the part of police agencies the U.S. has embarked on a policy of "ethnic cleansing' by putting poor young black males in prison for minor violations of the law.
Violations of the law that when committed by white middle class men (young and old) are ignored or dealt with therapeutically (Chambliss, 1995).
In Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland between 40-50% of the black male population between the ages of 18 and 15 is at any given moment either in prison, on probation, parole or there is a warrant out for their arrest (Maurer, 1990; 1994; Miller, 1992).
The consequences for the African American Community are devastating. Young men cannot marry because they cannot find employment because they have a prison record. Children grow up knowing their father through weekly visits to prison. Women with husbands in prison must work or go on welfare:
a possibility becoming increasingly impossible. The perpetuation of the image of crime out of control justifies as well the elimination of support systems such as welfare and job creation programs as the residents increasingly come to be defined as "the inherently criminal dangerous classes" and therefore "undeserving" (Gans, 1995).
Another consequence is the transformation of urban police departments into militarized, heavily armed tactical units whose mission is preemptive strikes and overt actions that make a mockery of constitutional guarantees. Meanwhile the Supreme Court, itself a victim of the propaganda of the law enforcement industrial complex eats away at the protection of civilians from the police misuse of power as they allow more and more incursions into private spaces such as automobiles and homes with fewer and fewer controls over police behavior.
Finally, there is the fact that increasingly criminal justice budgets grow at the expense of all other public expenditures. For the first time in history state and municipal governments are spending more on criminal justice than education (Chambliss, 1992).
Scarcely a politician can be found in these United States who will stand up and say, as did Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey that the crime problem has to be solved by spending more money on education, opportunities, and job creation rather than on police, prosecutors, judges and prisons.
The distortion of priorities emanating from the successful propaganda campaign of the crime control industry, the politicians and the media culminated in the changing of priorities in public expenditures.
Nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated than in the shift of tax revenues from education to criminal justice.
CONCLUSION
In 193l the Wickensham Commission warned of the dangers inherent in having law enforcement agencies with a vested interest in the outcome of crime data responsible for gathering data about crime. Referring to the fact that the data for the Uniform Crime Reports are gathered and disseminated by the FBI the Commission concluded:
"Nothing can be more misleading than statistics not scientifically gathered and compiled. The Uniform Crime Reports...{the FBI"s annual summary of crime in the U.S.] make no suggestion as to any limitations or doubts with respect to the utility or authority of the figures presented.
On the contrary they contain a graphic chart of 'monthly crime trends,' and along with them the bureau has released to the press statements quoting and interpreting them without qualification. It requires no great study of these reports to perceive a number of weaknesses which should impose a more cautious promulgation of them" (Wickensham, 1931).
The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Department of Justice's National Criminal Victimization Surveys have lived up to the Wickensham Commission's worst fears with consequences for the lives of American citizens that could scarcely have been imagined sixty years ago.
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