Whereas crime prevention efforts seek to thwart crimes from occurring, attempts at crime control concentrate on restraining, monitoring, supervising, and incapacitating those who have already committed a crime. Crime control in the United States has historically emphasized the use of legislative measures as well as various other mechanisms of incapacitation, surveillance, and restraint. Debates arguing the benefits of both punitive sanctions and rehabilitative treatments each carry political undertones, but the critical question as to what will keep communities safe remains to be answered.
The effort to control criminal misdeeds has been referred to as a ”war on crime,” yet Walker explains that ”’war’ is the wrong metaphor to use for reducing crime [since] it raises unrealistic expectations . . . promising a ‘victory”’ (Walker 2001, 11). According to Walker, fighting crime consists of a political process in which ”liberals and conservatives begin with different assumptions about crime, the administration of justice, and human nature” (p. 11). Whether each side proposes harsher punishments or more treatment, ”crime control politics makes criminal law a particularly attractive area of law reform” (Coker 2001, 802) for politicians seeking the approval of their constituency. Afraid of being victimized, voters turn to their leaders for solutions to the crime problem. As revealed by Cohen et al.’s 2001 study of 1,300 residents living in the United States, ”the typical household would be willing to pay between $100 and $150 per year for crime control programs that reduced specific crimes by 10% in their communities.” Unfortunately, despite the residents’ eagerness to pay for a safer community, Walker (2001) claims that ”both liberal and conservatives are guilty of peddling nonsense about crime” (p. 17) by espousing solutions that ”rest on faith rather than facts” (p. 18). Still, the majority of the crime control efforts in the United States are initiated through federal legislative action, state crime control measures, or local surveillance efforts by community corrections agencies.
Crime Control Legislation
As a result of increased crime rates during the 1960s, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) to encourage and fund the recruitment, training, and education of law enforcement officers. In addition, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 lengthened the list of federal crimes eligible for capital punishment, added a ”three-strikes” condition mandating life imprisonment for third-time recidivists in federal cases, and prohibited the manufacture of semiautomatic assault weapons for a ten-year period. Until it expired, the ban barred the manufacturing of semiautomatic weapons except for military or police use.
Since that time, the Omnibus Act has been revised to revamp the sentencing systems (1984), build new prisons, and develop community-based alternatives to incarceration (1990). Furthermore, the Violence Against Women Act, which was renewed in 2000, allocated federal funds to investigate and address violence against women, hire an additional one hundred thousand police officers, and build new prisons. More recently, the September 11, 2001, plane hijackings and terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon led to the signing of the USA PATRIOT Act on October 26, 2001. Along with several expansions of law enforcement powers, the PATRIOT Act enhanced the powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to monitor phone and Internet communications as well as detain noncitizens under suspicion for extended periods of time.
At the state level, Megan’s law, three-strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and capital punishment all exemplify efforts to control crime through limiting anonymity, increasing the length of incarceration, or completely incapacitating offenders. Megan’s law extends a sex offender’s responsibility for his or her crime beyond the incarceration period by publicly notifying the community of his or her returned residency in a community neighborhood. Upon the offender’s release, the sex offender will register with local law enforcement and, whenever deemed a high risk of recidivating, local residents will be notified of the offender’s return to the community. Three-strikes policies mandate that offenders of a third violent offense serve a life sentence, and mandatory minimum sentences require that offenders, particularly drug offenders, complete a specified minimum amount of incarceration prior to their eligibility for release.
Unfortunately, crime control efforts that lengthen the incarceration period for offenders such as three-strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences have ”actually backfired in many states. As prisons become overcrowded, correctional officials are forced to release many offenders earlier than they normally would just to make room for new arrivals” (Walker 2001, 11). With the increasing prison overcrowding, critics claim that nonviolent drug offenders sentenced to mandatory minimum sentences are being held in correctional facilities, while more dangerous offenders are released. Furthermore, besides elongating the length of incarceration and turning to life sentences, the ultimate sanction is the use of capital punishment. While the controversy against the use of the death penalty continues, at the beginning of 2006, more than 3,300 death row inmates awaited their executions in thirty-eight states (Death Penalty Information Center 2006).
As with the unanticipated consequences of three-strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences, other crime control policies have also resulted in adverse effects despite their good intentions. The ”one strike and you’re out” policy targeting drug dealers, gang members, and violent offenders implicated in unlawful activities within public housing sites became effective in March 1996. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, all public housing residents must sign an assurance that they will forfeit their housing contract if they, another member of the household, or a guest engages in drug-related activities within proximity of the property. In the case Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker et al. (2002), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of the housing authority to evict an entire household as a result of a drug or criminal conviction. In this particular case, three sets of elderly tenants brought suit against the housing authority. Despite years of law-abiding behaviors, senior citizens Pearlie Rucker, Barbara Hill, and Herman Walker were all evicted from their home as a result of a daughter, grandchild, or caretaker being apprehended in possession of marijuana or cocaine. Barbara Hill had lived in public housing in Oakland, California, for thirty years when she was evicted as a result of her grandson smoking marijuana with his friends in the parking lot of the public housing site. While the ”one-strike” policy sought to control gang and drug activity within public housing, those who were most disadvantaged and vulnerable became the casualties.
Incarceration
Whether crime control efforts are the result of legislative initiatives or state measures, the greatest impact of these policies has been felt within the correctional system. Crime control tactics have mainly included punitive attempts at lengthening incarceration sentences and toughening terms of release; therefore, ”imprisonment rates have skyrocketed since the 1970′s to levels not seen anywhere else in the world, except South Africa and Russia” (Rosen-feld 2003, 296). The United States is currently housing more than two million inmates within its correctional facilities while ”more than twice that number are under some form of correctional supervision in the community” (Rosenfeld 2003, 296). According to Clear and Dammer (2003, 3), ”five million Americans are under some form of correctional control. Four-fifths of them are not in prison or jail; they are on probation or parole or in another community program.” Clear and Dammer estimate that one in forty-seven adults is under community supervision.
Both probation and parole, the most frequently used types of community-based corrections, involve the supervision of offenders within a community context. Whereas probation represents an alternative sentence to incarceration, parole embodies the supervised release of an offender prior to the conclusion of his or her full sentence of incarceration. While under supervision, parolees sign a contract agreeing to abide by the conditions that they maintain regular contact with their probation or parole officer, abide by a curfew, secure regular employment, remain substance free, and refrain from involvement in illicit activities. In some cases, additional conditions such as geographic limitations or restricted contact with particular individuals may be added depending on the parolee’s circumstances. For some, halfway houses are offered to aid offenders in transitioning back into society. While in these residential programs, offenders and ex-offenders experience more freedom than while incarcerated, yet they are still held to higher standards of control than the general public. They live and work within the community, but they must follow the conditions of the program or risk returning to jail or prison. Often, those supervised within the community are monitored using various technologies and surveillance equipment. ”Most states now use some form of electronic monitoring to manage offenders in the community, and some have begun to use Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) systems to track their whereabouts twenty four hours a day” (Rosenfeld 2003, 297).
Technology used to monitor, restrain, or apprehend individuals assists in capitalizing on limited resources. In situations in which an offender has fled, technology has been used to locate and disable the offender. In Australia, ”a variety of technologies are under development for the in-capacitation of motor vehicles” (Grabosky 1998, 4) fleeing a scene. Controlling crime often entails immobilizing absconding vehicles. ”One such method involves transmitting a short electromagnetic pulse which can damage the electronic components of a vehicle’s ignition system and cause it to stall” (Grabosky 1998, 4) in the same manner as if the vehicle had consumed all its gasoline. Furthermore, the increasing efficacy of GPS allows for the use of a ”small adhesive projectile containing a radio-frequency transmitter” (Grabosky 1998, 4) to be propelled at the escaping vehicle and used in determining its location at a later time.
While technological advances provide assistance in apprehending, monitoring, and controlling offenders, technology alone cannot fight crime. Bryne and Taxman (2005) believe that both treatment and control must be utilized to achieve the desired results. Countless others suggest that ”with the burgeoning explosion of incarcerated individuals throughout the country, and the proliferation of prisons in which to house them . . . [one must examine the] current policies on crime control in conjunction with issues of social justice” (Pomeroy, 213), social change, and community involvement. Boyum and Kleiman (2001, 1) state that ”one of the few universally accepted propositions about crime in the United States is that active criminals are disproportionately substance abusers. In Manhattan, urine tests indicate that over three-quarters of those arrested have recently taken one or more illicit drugs.” For these exact reasons, drug courts were established in 1989 in Dade County, Florida, in an effort to specifically address the special needs of drug-abusing offenders. ”Drug courts recognize the atypicality of drug abusers and their need for special services provided only through an integrated community program involving several helping agencies” (Champion 2005, 535). According to Boyum and Kleiman (2001):
It is our view that current reentry initiatives also need to incorporate both treatment and control features to be (even marginally) successful in reducing the number of offenders who continually move back and forth from institutional to community control. The challenge is to develop initiatives (for example, a civic engagement model of restorative justice) that focus on individual and community change (Bazemore and Stinchcomb, 2004) because it is becoming increasingly clear that the system can not realistically expect offenders to change unless it begins to change the long-standing problems in offenders’ communities (for example, poverty, collective efficacy, culture). Ultimately, our choice of crime control policies should reflect our recognition of the inexorable link between individual and community change (Bryne and Taxman, 2005: 291-310).
While some hesitate about adding more therapeutic and restorative elements to crime control methods, one has to evaluate and consider the effects of current efforts to control crime through restraining, monitoring, supervising, and incapacitating offenders. Both nationally and globally, alternate justice models including therapeutic justice and restorative justice are recording successes. With the increasing problem of prison overcrowding and countless offenders under community supervision, data on these alternate justice models will be needed to develop the next wave of crime control approaches.
Conclusion
Crime control in the United States has emphasized the use of legislative measures to incapacitate, monitor, and restrain individuals. Various legislative crime control measures have lengthened incarceration sentences, expanded the list of federal crimes eligible for capital punishment, notified the public of sex offenders residing in their neighborhoods, prohibited the manufacture of semiautomatic assault weapons, and ejected individuals involved in illicit activities on public housing grounds.
Although it is clear that citizens are eager to solve the crime problem, one cannot discount the unintended consequences and adverse effects of some crime fighting initiatives. Furthermore, the problem of the increasing number of individuals under correctional control must be addressed. While the number of incarcerated individuals in the United States has surpassed two million, the numbers of individuals under community supervision continues to grow. The use of technology has provided assistance in monitoring probationers and parolees within the community, yet other solutions for controlling crime may require greater use of drug treatment programs, restorative justice endeavors, and additional community-based alternatives. Although it is unrealistic to expect that all crime will cease, new approaches to crime control will need to be developed
