CRIME, COMMUNITIES AND PUBLIC POLICY by Lawrence B. Joseph, editor. Chicago: Center for Urban Research and Policy Studies, The University of Chicago, 1995. 313 pp. Paper $15.95.

PAYING FOR CRIME: THE POLICIES AND POSSIBILITIES OF CRIME VICTIM REIMBURSEMENT by Susan Kiss Sarnoff, Westport, CN: Praeger, 1996. 115 pp. Cloth $49.95.

Reviewed by John Paul Ryan, Director of College and University Programs, American Bar Association
 

These two books about crime and public policy provide useful insights and up-to-date information, but they will be of limited interest to most political scientists, even to those who study the courts and criminal justice system. This is partly true because the books are narrow in focus, but also because most political scientists do not regularly read (or cite) criminal justice publications. Even more so, political scientists, and sociologists, need to re-engage in research about crime, the criminal justice system and society, so as to offer a broader and different voice in discussions of crime policy. It is no coincidence, in my view, that few contributors to the Law and Courts Discussion Listserv could cite exciting new research on the criminal courts (a recent posting), instead noting the excellent but now ten year old trilogy of works on the criminal courts by Peter Nardulli, James Eisenstein, and Roy Flemming.

CRIME, COMMUNITIES AND PUBLIC POLICY is an edited collection of papers from a 1992 symposium on crime and community safety; the focus is Chicago, though some contributors reference the country as a whole, other large cities (e.g., New York), or Illinois generally. Respondents offer brief commentaries to many of the articles, occasionally producing some clear-cut differences of opinion.

Though the book has a "community" focus, it covers a range of topics, including crime prevention; community policing; corrections; and youth, drugs and violence. Among the most provocative essays is University of Chicago Law Professor Randolph Stone’s critique of the criminal justice system. His offender-focused, rights-oriented approach cuts a wide (and often inaccurate) swath across the subject, drawing a response from Frances Kahn Zemans, herself a noted civil libertarian, who nevertheless acknowledges public concerns about crime, the increasingly violent nature of juvenile crimes, the need for victim perspectives, and the realization that an end to institutional racism may not materially affect the crime rate in America.

Two other articles deserving of mention are Paul Goldstein’s "Drugs and Violence: Myth and Reality," and Patrick McAnany’s "The Future of Corrections: Probation." Goldstein’s focus is actually New York City, while McAnany provides a broad national perspective that gives some additional attention to Chicago; more importantly, both are synthetic and contemporary. Goldstein does a very good job in identifying different kinds of drug-related violence--irrational behaviors, crimes to pay for drug habits, and territorial disputes in the black market distribution and sale of drugs--that contribute to the changing face of street crime in urban America. McAnany details a grim picture of the rise of incarceration and the concomitant need for more probation, while setting out the idea that probation in its more restrictive versions can truly be an intermediate sanction, i.e., a form of "punishment," not just the "pass" that is so routinely associated with its use.

Finally, Stuart Scheingold--one of the few political science contributors--provides a broad concluding essay that focuses on the politicization of street crime, how street crime is talked about, managed, and utilized to the advantage of public officials and the media. Scheingold is thoughtful and wide-ranging in his analyses. But in support he presents rather dated studies (from the 1970s and early 1980s), and as several contributors elsewhere point out, the nature of street crime has changed in urban America in the past twenty years--it is more random, more violent, more drug-related, more juvenile-committed than ever before.

Taken as a whole, the sum of the book is probably less than its parts. Three problems stand out. First, the book is about street crime, not crime. Read by a novice, the book could easily create the impression of crime as exclusively consisting of violent acts committed almost entirely by the urban underclass. There is no discussion about "white-collar" crime, committed either by businesspeople or politicians, ironic considering the locale of focus. Second, the public policy strategies (e.g., forms of community policing, or public health-criminal justice partnerships) identified by most contributors to reduce crime would strike many scholars and political activists alike as very narrow, tinkering sorts of reforms. Some contributors do allude to the inequality of incomes, poverty, and racism, but few provide recommendations and strategies to address these larger systemic biases. Third, the book struggles to find its voice (audience), partly because of its Chicago focus, but mostly because the level of analysis, writing, and data presentation are, alternatively, too sophisticated and too "dry" for most students, yet not sufficiently original or synthetic for most scholars in the field.

Susan Sarnoff’s PAYING FOR CRIME is a reference book that describes a variety of methods for reimbursing victims of crime, including court-ordered restitution, victim compensation programs, civil litigation, government entitlement programs for the needy, and private insurance. Each chapter provides brief descriptions of the particular method, including background, current practices, critiques, and suggestions for improvements. She offers a particularly thorough discussion of victim compensation programs, examining state-to-state differences in amounts that can be awarded (from no limit in New York to $150,000 in Washington to $5,000 in Georgia and other places), the influence of contributory conduct by the victim (some states reduce or deny claims), and sources of state funds for the programs (offender fines, general revenues, federal matching funds through the 1982 Victims of Crime Act, etc.). From her background as an advocate for crime victims (she was the founder of the Adelphi University Center for Crime Victim Advocates), Sarnoff provides occasional windows into scholarly research on the various approaches to victim compensation. For example, she cites research on civil lawsuits against offenders indicating that such suits usually fail (revealing yet another example of the "exceptionalism" of the O.J. Simpson case). Overall, though, the book is no more than a useful, if very expensive, reference book for current practices and possibilities in crime victim compensation.