What a difference a few years can make.

It wasn’t so long ago that Washington politicians ran for office on the platform of fighting crime and getting tough on criminals.  These days, it’s rare to hear any of them even mention crimefighting in passing.

It’s a testament to the fact that violent crime in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level since 1973.

It’s a remarkable winning streak for the country and is reflected in a cyclical drop in the crime rate for most of America’s major cities including Memphis.  And in most Western nations.

Cause and Effect

Every part of the criminal justice system claims credit.  Politicians claim that it’s the result of their impressive programs to beef up enforcement.  Police chiefs claim it’s the result of their innovative approaches from random frisking and to getting more money for police on the streets.  Researchers claim it’s the result of crime-mapping that identifies crime hot spots and allocates officers to them.  Attorneys general claim that it’s because of their insistence on more and more jail time, especially for gun crimes, and gang-fighting prosecutions.

The truth is that it may be all of these things or it may be that declines in the crime rate are just as much the result of demographic trends.  Because of the confusion, it makes it hard for cities to determine cause and effect and to separate fact from fiction in the face of so many claims of credit.

What’s especially surprising is that despite conventional wisdom, crime rates have continued to dip despite the recession and the high unemployment rate.   The homicide rate in New York is 80% less than it was two decades ago.  Chicago is down almost 50% and Los Angeles about 70%.

A major driver of crime decline is always age distribution.  In other words, crime rates tend to correlate to the number of young males since they are the largest group of offenders.  While the lengthier sentences get the headlines, they’re motivated more by politics than by reality since criminal activity generally takes place between 16 and 30 years of age.  This age group represents the vast majority of criminals, and it’s why it’s said that the most effective crime-fighting tool is a 30th birthday. In other words, taxpayers are paying a premium to keep thousands of men in jail past the period when they reasonably represent a risk.

New Things

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani took credit for falling crime rates with his get tough policies although it resulted more from the Boomers aging out.  There does seem to be one thing prevalent in cities where the crime rate has gone down: entrepreneurial police directors willing to try new things with the community.  Even in Los Angeles, with its history of police brutality and scandal, the police department has reached out to partner with community leaders to establish bonds with the African-American community and to establish a program to train ex-gang members to work on the reduction of violence.

But the real questions are whether government can do anything that substantially affects crime and what caused the rates to fall so drastically in recent decades.  Few people believe that zero-tolerance policing and three strikes laws that resulted in 20 year sentences for stealing a pizza have much impact.

The U.S. has managed to put two million people in prison, the highest per capita rate in the world.  Yes, the U.S. crime rate did fall but the Canadian crime rate followed a parallel track without any harsh laws and strident sentencing policies.  The same is true for England which is seeing the same dramatic declines in violent crime but essentially with no change in average sentences.

Two decades of declining crime rates in the U.S. is impressive, and it allows a lot of bragging rights for Police Director Larry Godwin on his way out, because like other cities, Memphis has recorded a decline in crime: 24% in violent crime in the past five years.  Strangely, despite the drop, there is no discernable attitude among Memphians that things have gotten better.

Crime Commission

Obviously, our crime problem isn’t resolved, but it seems a good time to develop new strategies.  It should start by targeting repeat offenders.  It should start with a total overhaul of a probation system that is largely a joke.   It should start with an end to warehousing nonviolent and violent offenders together and creating formidable barriers to rehabilitation.  It should start with what it takes to raise more disciplined children and the role that public schools can play.  It should start with stepped up attention to reentry programs for ex-offenders.

Most of all, Congress should finally move on Senator James Webb’s proposal for establishing a National Criminal Justice Commission that in 18 months would conduct a top-to-bottom review of the nation’s criminal justice system and offer concrete recommendations for reform.  Over the past three years, Senator Webb has met with a broad range of more than 100 organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Heritage Foundation, Sentencing Project, Fraternal Order of Police, NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union, and Prison Fellowship.

“This is not a political question; it is a leadership challenge that affects every community in the country and calls for us to act,” he said. “We can be smarter about whom we incarcerate, improve public safety outcomes, make better use of taxpayer dollars, and bring greater fairness to our justice system.  America has the highest documented rate of incarceration in the world, yet 60% of Americans feel less safe in their own neighborhoods than they did a year ago. We spend a staggering $68 billion every year just to keep people locked up, and we lose billions more in lost productivity due to the lack of proper re-entry programs.”

The proposed Criminal Justice Commission would study all parts of the criminal justice system including federal, state, and local governments’ criminal justice costs, practices, and policies. After conducting the review, the Commission would make recommendations for changes in, or continuation of oversight, policies, practices, and laws designed to prevent, deter, and reduce crime and violence, improve cost-effectiveness, and ensure the interests of justice.

And, that’s a real start.