There is perhaps no more graphic example of how wrong the thug huggers are than what happened in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s.
As in Canada, crime rates in the US begin to climb drastically in the 1960s as more and more of us began to buy the Left’s insistence that we needed a much softer system of justice. Despite the objections and warnings from most people who knew anything about human nature, we began to provide more and more rights and protections for the accused while at the same time providing fewer rights and protections for the victims. The most graphic example of this happens to be in the United States where in 1966 the Miranda Law was instituted. Thousands of criminals, including hundreds of murders, were set free when courts ruled that police hadn’t properly dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s.
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The US Supreme Court in the 1960s was the most left-wing and the most activist that country had ever experienced. Just how left-wing is perhaps best illustrated by statements made by Chief Justice David Bazelon in an article he wrote for Atlantic Monthly magazine in July 1960. In the article, entitled “The Imperative to Punish,” he stated that “the problem with the criminal justice system in the United States is not with the so-called criminal population, but with society whose need to punish is a primitive urge.” He went on to suggest that society’s need to punish was “highly irrational” and exhibited a “deep childish fear that if punishment was reduced in our prisons the multitude would run amuck.” He actually said all of those things and was widely quoted and believed here in Canada, as well.
At one point in the Atlantic Monthly article, Judge Bazelon went so far as to ask if it would really be the end of the world if all jails were converted into hospitals or rehabilitation centres. Obviously the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States could not bring himself to believe that anyone— no matter how horrendous the crime—really needed to be locked up!
He, of course, was only espousing the widely held leftist view that all criminals were really victims themselves, forced into their lifestyle by society’s failure to “get to the root cause” of the problem. A view, by the way, expressed by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien speaking in Washington shortly after 9/11.
If any of this sounds like the stuff you hear today from leftwing Liberals, New Democrats, and some segments of the media, say “hey!”
Interestingly enough, back in 1960, both in Canada and the United States, crime was actually decreasing. The murder rate in the US presents the most graphic example of that. On a per capita basis the murder rate in the US in 1960 was about half of what it was in 1930 and, believe it or not, considerably less than it had been in the early 1950s and was dropping.
So what happened when the supporters of “soft justice” the “criminals as victims” crowd got their way and we introduced what they describe as “progressive” methods in the justice system? They told us that a kinder, gentler system of treating the accused and the convicted would greatly reduce the crime rate and make us all much safer. The main reason they introduced the Miranda Law in the States they claimed, was that it would help to protect the lives of police officers. So what happened?
Well, what happened is all hell broke loose!
In Canada we have seen a dramatic increase in crime rates (The Ottawa Sun in a piece on April 24, 2006, says 35 percent since 1986) since the introduction of a soft justice system in the early 1960s. In the United States it was an explosion!
Some examples: The US murder rate on a per capita basis more than doubled between 1960 and 1974. The number of police officers killed after the passage of the Miranda Law (1966) tripled in the decade of the 1960s. In the United States, just as in Canada, the new softer laws were especially favourable for juveniles. In Canada, the juvenile crime rate has more than tripled since the passage of the Young Offenders Act. In the United States, the murder rate in the juvenile population more than tripled between 1965 and 1990. (All US crime statistics from the US Department of Justice, Crime Records; all Canadian statistics from Statistics Canada.)
One of the reasons I am providing the American experience is that while we followed their lead in swinging the pendulum far over to the left-hand corner in favour of the accused and convicted, we are only now under Stephen Harper even talking about following the US lead, admitting the error of our ways, toughening up our laws and reintroducing the concept of punishment.
Because today in the United States the crime rate, especially the violent crime rate, has plunged dramatically. It is especially evident in those cities that have been aggressively fighting crime with more and tougher policing and stiffer sentencing. New York today is hardly recognizable from what it was only 20 years ago.
By now you are probably familiar with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policy. His theory was that allowing even minor crime, such as broken windows and other forms of vandalism to go unpunished, actually encourages more serious crime.
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Mayor Giuliani’s first act was to clean up the New York police force by firing those involved in graft and serving notice it would not be tolerated. He then hired hundreds more police officers and empowered them to make arrests for even minor infractions. The common practice of jumping over subway turnstiles was stopped. Interestingly enough, they found that many of those who were doing this were wanted for other offences.
Gangs of youths hanging around street corners were ordered to move along. Kids police thought should be in school were hauled down to a police station and their parents summoned and in some cases fined. Attendance at schools shot up.
The mayor then served notice that he would not allow anyone to live on the streets. You have three choices he warned:
1.Go back to your homes if you have them. If not we’ll provide you with decent accommodation;
2.Go into drug or alcohol rehabilitation; or
3.Go to jail.
But whatever, we will not allow you to live on the streets. It is unsanitary, unsightly, and unsafe.
The usual suspects on the Left, including most of the Democrats in Congress, screamed bloody murder. There were grave warnings about overflowing jails. Open rebellion on the streets. The usual stuff. We’ve heard it all before here in Canada.
But guess what? It worked. As soon as police started hauling people off the streets and they realized the mayor meant business, almost all the street people just disappeared. Some did go into rehab and you’ll still see a few characters doing a bit of panhandling in New York, but the change is truly miraculous! Even such former hellholes as Harlem are now rapidly becoming middle class and better! And as for the jails…amazing. Just as the mayor and many others predicted, there are fewer people in New York jails today than there were when the crackdown began.
Times Square has even replaced its infamous strip clubs and peep shows with Disney, for heaven’s sake. Where once you feared for your life in broad daylight, today you can walk in safety almost anywhere in New York, at night!
As we have seen time and time again, when people realize they will likely get caught and be sentenced to some serious jail time, they decide to take up a career other than crime. (All New York crime figures are quoted in Rudy Giuliani’s book Leadership, Rudolf Giuliani with Ken Kurson, Miramax Books, Hyperion, New York, NY, 2002.)
Crime has been cut in more than half in many other US cities as a direct response to much tougher law enforcement and longer sentencing.
Despite the evidence, which is plain as the nose on your face, that cracking down on crime is the best way to prevent it, here in Canada the central philosophy of our criminal justice system remains firmly entrenched in that dangerously outmoded concept that providing criminals with more rights and privileges creates a safer society. Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed out of hand. With these terribly naive and misguided people, ideology wins easily any time it is challenged by reality.
Stephen