It would be presumptuous to claim to know exactly how to reduce crime, but a sociological understanding of its causes and dynamics points to several directions that show strong crime-reduction potential. Before sketching these directions, we first examine the get-tough approach, a strategy the United States has used to control crime since the s.
Harsher law enforcement, often called the get-tough approach , has been the guiding strategy for the U. This approach has involved increased numbers of arrests and, especially, a surge in incarceration, which has quintupled since the s. Reflecting this surge, the United States now has the highest incarceration rate by far in the world. Many scholars trace the beginnings of the get-tough approach to efforts by the Republican Party to win the votes of whites by linking crime to African Americans.
According to these scholars, the incarceration surge stems much more from political decisions and pronouncements, many of them racially motivated, by lawmakers than from trends in crime rates.
As Beckett and Sasson , pp. Crime-related issues rise to the top of the popular agenda in response to political and media activity around crimeโnot the other way around. By focusing on violent crime perpetrated by racial minoritiesโฆpoliticians and the news media have amplified and intensified popular fear and punitiveness. The get-tough approach since the s has greatly increased the number of prisoners.
Scholars question whether this approach has reduced crime effectively and cost efficiently. Today more than 2. This increase in incarceration has cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars since then. They conclude that this result was not cost effective and that the billions of dollars spent on incarceration would have had a greater crime-reduction effect had they been spent on crime-prevention efforts.
