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This title was first published in 2001. This book explores the
complex and often striking differences between national and local
perspectives, particularly those of racial minorities, on crime
prevention and the role that community residents should play in
prevention programmes.
This title was first published in 2001. This book explores the
complex and often striking differences between national and local
perspectives, particularly those of racial minorities, on crime
prevention and the role that community residents should play in
prevention programmes.
In The Myth of Mob Rule, Lisa Miller compares three countries-the
US, the UK, and the Netherlands-and explores when and with what
consequences crime becomes a politically salient issue. Drawing
from extensive original research, her findings reverse many of the
accepted causal claims in the literature, finding that countries
with multi-party parliamentary systems are more responsive to mass
publics than the U.S. on crime and that such responsiveness
promotes protection from a range of social risks, including from
excessive violence and state repression. In other words, democratic
publics in such countries support measures against violent crime,
but also support policies that alleviate and improve social
conditions in high-crime areas. The Myth of Mob Rule is essential
reading for anyone concerned with the ways that political
institutions affect crime and social welfare.
Scholars and lay persons alike routinely express concern about the
capacity of democratic publics to respond rationally to emotionally
charged issues such as crime, particularly when race and class
biases are invoked. This is especially true in the United States,
which has the highest imprisonment rate in the developed world, the
result, many argue, of too many opportunities for elected officials
to be highly responsive to public opinion. Limiting the power of
democratic publics, in this view, is an essential component of
modern governance precisely because of the risk that broad
democratic participation can encourage impulsive, irrational and
even murderous demands. These claims about panic-prone mass
publics-about the dangers of 'mob rule'-are widespread and are the
central focus of Lisa L. Miller's The Myth of Mob Rule. Are
democratic majorities easily drawn to crime as a political issue,
even when risk of violence is low? Do they support 'rational
alternatives' to wholly repressive practices, or are they
essentially the bellua multorum capitum, the "many-headed beast,"
winnowing problems of crime and violence down to inexorably harsh
retributive justice? Drawing on a comparative case study of three
countries-the U.S., the U.K. and the Netherlands-The Myth of Mob
Rule explores when and with what consequences crime becomes a
politically salient issue. Using extensive data from multiple
sources, the analyses reverses many of the accepted causal claims
in the literature and finds that: serious violence is an important
underlying condition for sustained public and political attention
to crime; the United States has high levels of both crime and
punishment in part because it has failed, in racially stratified
ways, to produce fundamental collective goods that insulate modern
democratic citizens from risk of violence, a consequence of a
democratic deficit, not a democratic surplus; and finally,
countries with multi-party parliamentary systems are more
responsive to mass publics than the U.S. on crime and that such
responsiveness promotes protection from a range of social risks,
including from excessive violence and state repression.
Much of the existing research on race and crime focuses on the
manipulation of crime by political elites or the racially biased
nature of crime policy. In contrast, Lisa L. Miller here
specifically focuses on political and socio-legal institutions and
actors that drive these developments and their relationship to the
politics of race and poverty; in particular, the degree to which
citizens at most risk of victimization--primarily racial minorities
and the poor--play a role in the development of political responses
to crime and violence.
Miller begins her study by providing a detailed analysis of the
narrow and often parochial nature of national and state crime
politics, drawing a sharp contrast to the active and intense local
political mobilization on crime by racial minorities and the urban
poor. In doing so, The Perils ofFederalism illustrates the ways in
which the structure of U.S. federalism has contributed to the
absence of black and poor victims of violence from national policy
responses to crime and how highly organized but narrowly focused
interest groups, such as the National Rifle Association, have a
disproportionate influence in crime politics. Moreover, it
illustrates how the absence of these groups from the policy process
at other levels promotes policy frames that are highly skewed in
favor of police, prosecutors, and narrow citizen interests, whose
policy preferences often converge on increasing punishments for
offenders.
Ultimately, The Perils of Federalism challenges the conventional
wisdom about the advantages of federalization and explains the key
disadvantages that local communities face in trying to change
policy.
In the past dozen years, a number of American cities plagued by gun
violence have tried to enact local laws to stem gun-related crime.
Yet policymakers at the state and federal levels have very
frequently stymied their efforts. This is not an atypical
phenomenon. In fact, for a whole range of pressing social problems,
state and federal policymakers ignore the demands of local
communities that suffer from such ills the most. Lisa L. Miller
asks, how does America's multi-tiered political system shape crime
policy in ways that empower the higher levels of government yet
demobilize and disempower local communities? After all, crime has a
disproportionate impact on poor and minority communities, which
typically connect crime and violence to broader social and economic
inequities at the local level. As The Perils of Federalism
powerfully demonstrates, though, the real control to set policy
lies with the state and federal governments, and at these levels
single-issue advocates--gun rights groups as well as prison,
prosecutorial and law enforcement agencies--are able to shape
policy over the heads of the people most affected by the issue.
There is a tragic irony in this. The conventional wisdom that
emerged from the Civil Rights era was that the higher levels of
government--and the federal level in particular--best served the
disadvantaged, while localities were most likely to ignore the
social problems resulting from racial and economic inequality.
Crime policy, Miller argues, teaches us an opposite lesson: as
policy control migrates to higher levels, the priorities of
low-income minority communities are ignored, the realities of
racial and economic inequality are marginalized, andcitizens lose
their voices. Taking readers from the streets of Philadelphia to
the halls of Congress, she details how and why our system operates
in the way that it does. Ultimately, the book not only challenges
what we think about the advantages of relying of federal power for
sensible and fair solutions to longstanding social problems. It
also highlights the deep disconnect between the structure of the
American political system and the ideals of democratic
accountability.
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