An exhaustive, brash, and perceptive analysis of America's crime
problem - to which former Bronx police chief Bouza offers
remarkably common-sense solutions. Bouza's examination of the
all-too familiar statistics of murder, rape, assault, and other
violent crimes cuts past the usual rhetoric to what he states is
the core issue: that the nation's "failure to address poverty and
racism" has led to the proliferation of drugs and increasingly
violent levels of street crime. As he sorts through the numbers -
nearly 24,000 murders annually (far more, he notes, than the
country would accept in a war); 2.5% of the nation's households
victimized in 1991 by a rape, robbery, assault, burglary, or auto
theft - he contends that, even though most street crime happens to
blacks, it's black-on-white violence that gets media attention,
pandering "to our basest instincts." Most proposed solutions have
been "sexy," politically expedient ones: more cops and jails,
stiffer penalties, the "war" on drugs. Bouza suggests both short-
and long-term solutions that embrace tough penalties for tough
criminals but that also include a national preventative strategy of
treatment, training, and encouragement. He calls also for a
presidential commission on crime that would recognize poverty and
racism as the roots of the problem. Bouza states, however, that
criminals acting from compulsion - child molesters, rapists, serial
killers - are poor risks and should "be warehoused." He doesn't
preclude castration for offenders, and he believes that insanity
pleas should be more strictly limited. Meanwhile, the policies and
platforms of both national parties are, he says, little more than
"quick fixes." Overlong and repetitious, but, still, an important
document that sweeps aside the empty words and emotionalism that
have blocked progress in reducing crime. (Kirkus Reviews)
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