Mon, 29 Aug 1994 19:54:26 -0700 for From: jmaurer@s-cwis.unomaha.edu (John J. Maurer) Subject: Re: fear To: mgibbons@cwis.unomaha.edu (Michael Gibbons) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 21:54:24 -0500 (CDT) > > howdy all, > > in my earlier post on our fear of crime and the ways in which we avoid > dealing with real crime, i posed a few questions for consideration. > curiously, most weren't addressed, and those who were most critical of my > post addressed nothing at all in the post. thank you to those who are > actually willing to engage in disourse. > > here then is an invitation for those on the list who are a bit shy > to join the discussion. how do we as a nation deal with a fear of crime > that is at least as debilitating as the fact of crime without ignoring the > real problems of living in one of the most brutal industrialized nations > on the earth? > > michael > > This is a good question, Michael, as I have often felt that it is also very important to address perceived crime (ie fear of crime). Fear of crime is as valid an issue as crime itself. I was soo concerned with this issue that at one naive level of thinking I was curious on whether capital punishment and other harsh punitive measures (as well as non-harsh but pathetic resource allottment to such things as increased "foot patrol") were justified because they may comfort the population into feeling safe. This of course doesn't work when they still see that crime rate hasn't deminished after these tactics. Unfortunately the trend has been to then state, "see we still need harsher penalties...I know let's make a law that allows us to fry 13 year old criminals. The fact that fear of crime is increasing is in no small part to due with our institutions that are the authority of criminal justice (police,DEA,FBI). For example the FBI's nifty but misleading crime clock statistics (ex. every 2 minutes a woman is raped, every hour a person is brutally murdered etc.). Such reports are bogus. I'll leave room here to let someone else step in. John Maurer