Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Here is Eisner’s one-sentence summary of how to halve the homicide rate within three decades: “An effective rule of law, based on legitimate law enforcement, victim protection, swift and fair adjudication, moderate punishment, and humane prisons is critical to sustainable reductions in lethal violence.”³² The adjectives effective, legitimate, swift, fair, moderate, and humane differentiate his advice from the get-tough-on-crime rhetoric favored by right-wing politicians. The reasons were explained by Cesare Beccaria two hundred and fifty years ago. While the threat of ever-harsher punishments is both cheap and emotionally satisfying, it’s not particularly effective, because scofflaws just treat them like rare accidents—horrible, yes, but a risk that comes with the job. Punishments that are predictable, even if less draconian, are likelier to be factored into day-to-day choices.

Together with the presence of law enforcement, the legitimacy of the regime appears to matter, because people not only respect legitimate authority themselves but factor in the degree to which they expect their potential adversaries to respect it. Eisner, together with the historian Randolph Roth, notes that crime often shoots up in decades in which people question their society and government, including the American Civil War, the 1960s, and post-Soviet Russia.³³

Recent reviews of what does and doesn’t work in crime prevention back up Eisner’s advisory, particularly a massive meta-analysis by the sociologists Thomas Abt and Christopher Winship of 2,300 studies evaluating just about every policy, plan, program, project, initiative, intervention, nostrum, and gimmick that has been tried in recent decades.³⁴ They concluded that the single most effective tactic for reducing violent crime is focused deterrence. A “laser-like focus” must first be directed on the neighborhoods where crime is rampant or even just starting to creep up, with the “hot spots” identified by data gathered in real time. It must be further beamed at the individuals and gangs who are picking on victims or roaring for a fight. And it must deliver a simple and concrete message about the behavior that is expected of them, like “Stop shooting and we will help you, keep shooting and we will put you in prison.” Getting the message through, and then enforcing it, depends on the cooperation of other members of the community—the store owners, preachers, coaches, probation officers, and relatives.

Also provably effective is cognitive behavioral therapy. This has nothing to do with psychoanalyzing an offender’s childhood conflicts or propping his eyelids open while he retches to violent film clips like in A Clockwork Orange. It is a set of protocols designed to override the habits of thought and behavior that lead to criminal acts. Troublemakers are impulsive: they seize on sudden opportunities to steal or vandalize, and lash out at people who cross them, heedless of the long-term consequences.³⁵ These temptations can be counteracted with therapies that teach strategies of self-control. Troublemakers also have narcissistic and sociopathic thought patterns, such as that they are always in the right, that they are entitled to universal deference, that disagreements are personal insults, and that other people have no feelings or interests. Though they cannot be “cured” of these delusions, they can be trained to recognize and counteract them.³⁶ This swaggering mindset is amplified in a culture of honor, and it can be deconstructed in therapies of anger management and social-skills training as part of counseling for at-risk youth or programs to prevent recidivism.

Whether or not their impetuousness has been brought under control, potential miscreants can stay out of trouble simply because opportunities for instant gratification have been removed from their environments.³⁷ When cars are harder to steal, houses are harder to burgle, goods are harder to pilfer and fence, pedestrians carry more credit cards than cash, and dark alleys are lit and video-monitored, would-be criminals don’t seek another outlet for their larcenous urges. The temptation passes, and a crime is not committed. Cheap consumer goods are another development that has turned weak-willed delinquents into law-abiding citizens despite themselves. Who nowadays would take the risk of breaking into an apartment just to steal a clock radio?