Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control.

• Author: Rosenfeld, Richard
• Position: Book Review

CRIME: PUBLIC POLICIES FOR CRIME CONTROL (JAMES Q. WILSON & JOAN PETERSILIA, EDS., OAKLAND, CA: ICS PRESS, 2002). 705 PP.

Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control is a superb collection of essays by a group of distinguished criminologists on what is known about policies and programs that do and do not appear to reduce crime and delinquency. Without exception, the authors' contributions are systematic, careful, timely, and thoughtful. They also betray a narrowness of vision that has both strengths and limitations. The most important strength is a resulting emphasis on public policies to control crime that are politically feasible. The basic weakness is that by delimiting crime-control policies to just those that are feasible, we are left with policies that are either unlikely to make a significant dent in the nation's crime problem, or would do so at the risk of sharply curtailing individual rights and liberties.

The constricted policy vision evident in this volume is the result of what the editors regard as "one of the most encouraging developments of the last four decades ... the increased cooperation between social scientists and policymakers." (1) Whenever parties cooperate with one another, each gives up something of value in exchange for something of greater value. It is not immediately clear what policymakers have given up by cooperating with social scientists, but it is very evident what social scientists, specifically criminologists, have exchanged for greater access to and resources from policymakers: serious attention to what used to be called the "root causes" of crime. This volume and the new realism in criminology that it so ably showcases represent something of a personal victory for James Q. Wilson, who three decades ago mounted a forceful case against root-cause explanations of crime as irrelevant to public policy. (2) In the mid-1970's Wilson's argument was highly controversial. Today it is a taken-for-granted fact of life in American criminology.

Generally speaking, the "root causes" of crime can be divided into those embedded in the social order and those embedded in individuals. Readers searching for explanations or policies linking crime to the basic social and economic arrangements of American society will not find any in this book. However, if your preferred root causes lie in the biological makeup of individuals, you will not be quite so disappointed.

Adrian Raine's chapter on the biological basis of criminal behavior takes the reader on a readable and fascinating tour of recent research on the genetic, psychophysiological, brain-related, and biochemical sources of anti-social and criminal behavior. The clear winner in terms of research support, Raine reports, is chronic under-arousal. (3) Persons with low resting heart rate are consistently found to display higher levels of violent and anti-social behavior than "normals." The reasons appear to be that under-aroused individuals are less fearful and seek more stimulation than others. Under-arousal manifested in low resting heart rate is unrelated to any psychiatric disorder; it is unusual, according to Raine, in its "diagnostic specificity." (4) That is not to say that low resting heart rate is specific to sociopaths and criminals--far from it. It also characterizes "bomb disposal experts who have been decorated for their bravery" and "British paratroopers decorated in the Falklands War." (5)

Can explanations of crime as deeply rooted as this one is in the internal workings of individuals have any meaningful connection to public policy? Certainly Raine thinks so. The biological bases of crime, he writes, are "amenable to change through benign interventions." (6) Some of the interventions he discusses, such as better health care for poor mothers, are benign enough, as are nutritional enrichment and biofeedback for under-aroused children and adolescents, although some policymakers may wonder where the next generation of demolition experts and paratroopers will come from if such programs actually work. But the larger import of Raine's policy proposals is less benign. Abnormal individuals may have little control over the biological conditions that predispose them to commit violent and criminal acts, he observes, but they are responsible for knowing their "risk factors" and seeking treatment or taking other steps to prevent harm to others. If those actions are to be truly preventative, then they must occur before the harm is done, presumably at the point of diagnosis. Raine does not describe the system of medical surveillance and control necessary to detect and correct the biological risk factors for crime, nor...