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5. After reading the following selection, write an argumentative passage drawing one of these conclusions: (1) A comprehensive anti-crime program should be adopted. [State the chief provisions of that program.] (2) The possession, sale, and transfer of handguns should be outlawed. (3) "Get tough on crime" programs emphasizing harsher sentences are a useless waste of money. (4) Harsher sentences, including the death penalty, are needed to combat crime. U.S.¾ Murder Capital of the World by George Bryjak The good news is that in many American cities, rates of violent crime — including homicide — have decreased in recent months. On the negative side, when this downturn is placed in historical perspective, as well as examined in light of crime projections, there is little to celebrate or feel secure about. Between 1960 and 1980, the homicide rate (the number of homicides per 100,000 population) more than doubled, from 4.7 to 10.2. If the level of emergency-room technology and skill on the part of physicians and nurses had not improved during that same time, the increase would have been even greater. Since 1980, the homicide rate has fluctuated somewhat but remained high. While any reduction in the killing is welcome, what we are witnessing is a slight calm before the proverbial storm in the United States — the murder capital of the industrialized world. Our homicide rate is approximately 10 times higher than rates in France, Germany and Greece and 17 times as high as those in Ireland and Japan. Various aspects of homicide have also changed dramatically over the past three decades. For one, the age of those arrested for murder continues to fall. Fifty-two percent are now between 15 and 24 years old, and the peak age of murderers has dropped from 20 to 17 years of age. Between 1970 and 1984, the homicide rate of young white males climbed 50 percent and tripled for young black males. This observation is troublesome in light of the fact that the number of youths between 15 and 19 years of age is projected to increase 23 percent by the year 2005. If, as numerous criminologists have argued, current lower rates of violent crime are primarily a result to a temporary decrease in the number of teen-agers, the days of fewer such offenses are just about over. A second disturbing trend is that the number of murders committed with firearms has been going up steadily. In 1985, 59 percent of all homicides were committed with guns; by 1992, that figure had jumped to 68 percent. Firearms are definitely the weapons of choice for individuals between 15 and 19 years of age, who use guns in 85 percent of their killings. No doubt the 371 percent increase in juvenile gang murders (that claim many victims who are not gang members as well) nationwide between 1980 and 1992 is related to more heavily armed youths and drive-by shootings. Criminologist James Fox of Northeastern University notes that "This generation of youths has more deadly weapons in their hands" and "a much more casual attitude about violence." That a substantial number of young, violent criminals are essentially amoral goes a long way toward explaining another significant transformation in homicides. Historically, the vast majority of murders in this country have been crimes of passion; the victim and offender are friends, relatives or acquaintances who argue over love, money, a spilled drink, etc. Because of this relationship, police usually did not have to look very far to find the killer. In 1965, 91 percent of murders were "cleared by arrest," meaning that at least one individual was arrested and charged with the offense. By 1992, that number had dropped to 65 percent, and the FBI estimates that currently half of all homicide victims are killed by strangers. Many emotionally cold — some might say emotionally dead — teen-age killers exhibit little, if any, regret over taking a life. In a recent Atlantic Monthly article, attorney Adam Walinsky stated, "Too many have learned to kill without remorse, for a drug territory or for an insult, because of a look or a bump on a sidewalk or just to do it: Why not?" These pleasure-seeking, present-oriented young criminals who live for the here and now, as Princeton University's John Dilulio describes them, are far less likely to be deterred by the threat of punishment, including the death penalty. Dilulio predicts that between 35,000 and 40,000 persons a year (up from 24,350 in 1993) could be homicide victims in the near future. To put this number in perspective, consider that 56,555 Americans died as a result of out 10-year involvement in the Vietnam War. And while the preponderance of those individuals whose lives are cut short by murder are young (three of five victims); males (three of four victims); and African-Americans(one of two victims), "every American," as the FBI's most recent Uniform Crime Report states, "has a realistic chance of murder victimization in view of the random nature the crime has assumed." We are at a moment in our societal evolution when a number of trends that contribute to violent youth crime have converged. The streets of our cities are awash in drugs and guns. Music, television and movies are replete with nonsensical violence that seemingly has no limits on brutality. Racial intolerance and tension are high in many locales. More teen-agers (especially those from minority groups) are coming of age at a time of substandard schools, high unemployment, despair and alienation in the central cities. A 1993 National Research Council study concluded that economic hardship is the single most powerful predictor of criminal violence among young people. Finally, there is the transformation (or breakdown) of the American family. Between 1970 and 1984, the number of infants born in the United States to never-married mothers increased 500 percent, while the number of children living with both parents declined from 87.7 percent in 1960 to 72.7 percent in 1988. In black America, 55 percent of children live with only one parent. When compared to youths living with only one parent, typically their mother, engage in more rule-violating behavior, including conduct that results in arrest and contact with the juvenile justice system. Other than build more prisons to incarcerate individuals convicted of committing violent offenses, nothing much has been done to prevent people from killing one another. Over the past 30 years, neither Republicans nor Democrats have offered anything near a comprehensive program to alleviate exceedingly violent and frequent youth crime. While we cannot expect that government intervention (significantly more police, banning of military-style automatic weapons, urban development, inner-city jog programs) in and of itself will solve this problem, it is also clear that a failure to act makes the bloodletting that much worse. Walinsky asks why a government that will spend $261 billion annually (the defense budget) to protect its citizens from external enemies will not spend what is necessary "to defend the nation against domestic enemies who killed more than 10,000 people who were strangers to them in 1994, and who will surely kill more in every year that lies ahead." That is a very good question. |