Bob Greene`s recent column, ”Criminals are stealing America from us,”
manifests his remarkable ignorance about criminal justice issues.
Bob says we have to stop carjackings, urban riots and other grisly acts by hiring more police officers and building more prisons. More police officers? How many will it take to have one at every stoplight to prevent carjackings? Research shows that (even well-intentioned) officers do not prevent crime; the best they can do is respond to it.
More prisons? I wonder if Bob knows that our prison populations-state and federal-have grown exponentially in the last two decades. Does he know that, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, more than 50 percent of federal inmates are non-violent drug offenders? We already have so many prisoners that we lead the world in per capita incarceration (South Africa is a fading second).
Funny, Bob failed to mention other notable crimes that have ravaged our nation. What about the S&L debacle, which will cost all of us about $1 trillion? (Just who is stealing America?) With an extra $1 trillion we probably could afford to implement his police state fantasy.
The fact is, the country cannot do ”everything it can” to cure social ills if it is spending vast sums in an attempt to force social order. Instead, we should heed the words of Albert Einstein. He said that peace cannot be coerced; rather, it will only come with understanding.
