Can anything really be done?

• Position: About crime

Reforms that substantially will lower the crime rate are unlikely because of cultural taboos, according to Lawrence Friedman, a Stanford University law professor and author of Crime and Punishment in American History. "If you add up all the taboos we have--against legalization of drugs, real gun control, paying taxes for social programs we might at least try--it's hard not to come to the conclusion that there isn't much we can do about crime."

Many of the taboos are rooted in Americans' demand for individual freedom. "At one time in South Korea, they had an absolute curfew between midnight and five a.m. The police kept everyone off the streets. It was as hard on burglars as other citizens and very effective at squelching crime. But most Americans would consider that an unacceptable inroad on their personal lives."

The rate of serious crime is at an all-time high today and is greater than in comparably industrialized countries. So, too, is imprisonment for crime. "We've had a rash of prison buildings, harsher sentences, guidelines for mandatory punishment for this and that. I don't think we have much to show for it. . . ."

What about putting more policemen on the streets, as the President proposes, or using the National Guard as police in cities, as the mayor of Washington, D.C., requested? "A store is not going to be robbed when there is a policeman standing in front of it night after night. It would be foolish to deny that would have an effect, but how many police can you have? Forty million?"

Would gun control help? "I think guns are a symptom, not the disease, but an important symptom. Basically nobody is killed in England by guns during the course of a year. We have a propensity to violence...