Taking Crime Head-On

Fire of Liberty

Gerard Alexander has a great piece over at The Weekly Standard that notes the nations of Europe have been experiencing a substantial increase in criminal activities like assaults, robbery, theft (as well as auto theft), murder in the last decades. While a handful of political leaders have tried to lay most of this increase in crime at the feet of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Northern Africa, Alexander notes that some of the blame should be turned towards the absurd welfare-state systems that have cropped up in Europe that kills job-creation and keeps young people out of the loop of social advancement. By recieving a dole from the government, the "youths" don't have to get or search for a job in order to make a living, so they are able to rack up some hours in the streets of Europe committing crimes after crimes thus taking their nation down to one peg at a time. Now it's true that the enormous welfare state has contributed significantly to the rise of crime in Europe but as Alexander points out, the leaders of the various states within Europe have also failed in their approach to preventing such crime and the promotion of social order/civic pride within their society.

For too long the leaders throughout the capitals of Europe have looked the other way when it comes to dealing with crime by simply blaming them on things like racism, lack of understanding, low welfare payments, or some other psycho-babble that is all the fashion within the press and the elites within Europe instead of taking a bold stand and enforcing the law. One only has to look at Rudy Giuliani's excellent policy of "broken windows" in which the police went after the small crimes like "Squigy men" (Bums who stopped cars in New York by throwing dirty water on windshields and refusing to clean them until they were paid), graffiti, pick-pockets, littering, and simple things like cleaning up blighted areas around New York.(All resulted in a drop in all crimes throughout Gotham.) By enforcing the laws and pointing out how a society should function while also failing to fall prey to the hand-holding tolerance of yesteryear, Rudy was able to become a towering figure in turning New York city around and pulling it out of a criminal hell that it was. If the leaders in Europe, who are currently experiencing these onslaughts of crime, would apply the same policies of law enforcement that Giuliani promoted during his tenure, they could put their nations on a right course. As Alexander points out, the experience of decades of rising crime rates seem to have sparked a movement of "taking back" one's country and neighborhoods from the criminals and return it to the law biding citizens. Here's a look at what seems to be afoot in Europe with regards to a crime-fighting rethink:

THE ONLY SILVER LINING is that Europe's high crime rate may yet play something like the role it did in the political and intellectual turn that America took in the 1970s. Crime helped force America's first neoconservatives and neoliberals to confront questions of social order, civic virtue, and moral standards, questions that usually don't come up in debates over taxes and spending. Amidst the rioting, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin remarked, "What is in question today is the effectiveness of our model of integration," meaning France's approach to "social cohesion." De Villepin believes social cohesion comes from government and its subsidies. Crime does of course raise some financial issues. But, if anything, property crimes reflect the something-for-nothing mentality that welfare states already inculcate and legitimize. And crime as a political issue is freighted with moral significance, involving, as it does, a rejection of the mores needed for any ordered society. In this country, the rising crime rates of the 1960s and 70s eventually brought a renewed appreciation, among liberals and conservatives, for the indispensability of certain social mores, like minimal respect for character, national traditions, and virtuous individuals. Crime helped many Americans remember how important it is that mores like these be instilled in society's members, especially its newest and youngest ones.

I'd say that the need to dust off Catherine M. Coles and George Kelling's wonderful work Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order And Reducing Crime In Our Communities and talking to Rudy, William Bratton, and Bernard Kerik on how to get a better grip on crime before they're overtaken by crime.