Early in the history
of this blog, this writer provided a reason or set of reasons for the existence
of this blog; that is, the state of civic life in this country is deficient and
one area with which to address this less than optimal state is civics
education. Since then, one can
justifiably ask: have those conditions
been rectified?
Currently,
this blog is providing more recent evidence of how civic the citizenry is
today. Leading up to this posting, the
blog has looked at levels of knowledge of government and politics, levels of
political engagement, levels of skills in that engagement, and levels of
civility. Unfortunately, the same
overall evaluation can still be made; as a matter of fact, things have gotten
worse.
In
this posting, this update will come to an end.
There is one more area of concern this whole issue of good citizenry
should address: levels of law abiding
behavior or, stated negatively, levels of criminality. A responsible civics program should
reasonably instruct students to be law-abiding citizens, or so common sense
would indicate. A general axiom guiding such instruction should be: a citizen should obey the law.
After
all, one chief constitutional principle in the US is justice under the rule of
law. Also, within this approach there
should be the effort to encourage a disposition toward obeying the law. Yes, one should engage in determining what
laws should be passed by the nation’s legislatures – from Congress to the city
council – but, once passed, the laws should be obeyed.
One
can cite instances when it is good and just to engage in civil disobedience on
rare occasions, but even then, such acts need to be justified and the
participants willing to accept the consequences of those acts, including jail
time. Of course, the history of the
civil rights movement and perhaps the protests of the Vietnam War come to mind
when one considers justified civil disobedience, at least in the minds of many
who favored those movements. But other
than those kinds of examples, one should obey the law.
Under
normal conditions, why anyone would disobey the law can be complicated. Reasons can range from the level of severity
of the offense (e. g., speeding on an expressway might not be considered
criminal behavior) to the economic realities in which an offender might find
him/herself. Regardless of these
intervening factors, the general principle should be: obey the law.
But
with any kind of factor one might think acceptable, one should remember that
these conditions generally exist everywhere.
Poverty in many places much more extreme than here, exists
everywhere. Mental illness exists
everywhere. Dysfunctional families exist
everywhere, and so on ...
Therefore,
if we look at comparative statistics about lawlessness among countries, the
information should give us at least a sense of how well this nation’s populous
lives by the axiom: one should obey the
law. In turn, the information should
also give us another measure of how well civics education is fulfilling its
aims and functions.
To
start, the US has over 7.3 million people in its prisons. With 5% of the world's population, it has 25%
of the world's prison population.[1] Comparing the US to another nation which
shares many of the same values, the United Kingdom has 150 out of 100,000
people in prison. The US has 686 out of
100,000 people detained.[2]
While
many factors contribute to any comparison, such as a government's ability to
prosecute its laws or over prosecution and punishment for minor crimes – e. g.,
drug related prosecution – the US does not fare well in comparisons regarding
criminality.
But
one might point out, as the media has done recently, that a lot of this
incarceration in the US is the result of over-zealous laws concerning
drugs. And one good bit of information
on this front is a lowering crime rate in more recent years. For example, the rate of victims per 1,000
population has dropped in the US from 51.7 in 1979 to 15 in 2010.[3] Yet before we celebrate, there are other
relevant numbers.
Another
statistical site offers the following:
total number of persons brought into formal contact with the police
and/or criminal justice system, for all crimes in 2011 (top ten nations)
United States 12,408,899 with a population of 322
million (38.58 per 1,000)
Germany 2,112,843 with a population of 81 million
(26.08 per 1,000)
France 1,172,547 with a population
of 67 million (17.5 per 1,000)
Russian Fed. 1,041,340 with a population of 147
million (7.08 per 1,000)
Italy 900,870 with a population of 61
million (14.77 per 1,000)
Canada 688,920 with a population of 36
million (19.14 per 1,000)
Chile 611,322 with a population of 18
million (33.96 per 1,000)
Poland 521,942 with a population of
38 million (13.74 per 1,000)
Spain 377,965 with a population of 46
million (8.22 per 1,000)
Netherlands 372,305 with a population of 17 million (21.9
per 1,000)[4]
Obviously,
the US does not do well in this comparison.
Whether a nation is ruled by a liberal regime as opposed to an
authoritarian regime is relevant to how levels of criminality are
measured. So, while these other
countries might or might not have as extensive a list of drug laws, the US
beats them all in terms of its crime rate.
The
closest country is Chile. Chile, as a
Latin country, has a culture, described by Daniel Elazar, as one that harbors
an anarchistic individualism.[5] This blog has argued that the US started out
with a more federalist sense of individualism; one that “recognized the subtle
bonds of partnership linking individuals even as they preserve their individual
integrities... .”[6] It has, in more recent years, abandoned its
more federalist roots (a process that has been described in this blog). These numbers are but one indicator of how
far that shift has made itself known.
To be clear, this description is not
speaking of a dystopian image of lawlessness.
As a matter of fact, the nation has experienced in the last decade a
drastic drop in crime rates. Paul
Krugman writes:
The
murder rate began falling, and falling, and falling. By 2014 it was all the way
back down to where it was half a century earlier. There was some rise in 2015,
but so far, at least, it’s barely a blip in the long-run picture.
Basically,
American cities are as safe as they’ve ever been. Nobody is completely sure why
crime has plunged, but the point is that the nightmare landscape of [current –
2016 – political] rhetoric … bears no resemblance to reality.
And
we’re not just talking about statistics here; we’re also talking about lived
experience. Fear of crime hasn’t disappeared from American life — today’s New
York is incredibly safe by historical standards, yet I still wouldn’t walk
around some areas at 3 a.m. But fear clearly plays a much diminished role now
in daily life.[7]
This account of current conditions as
compared to past conditions sounded to this writer as curious given the family
stories he heard about how law abiding people were in the good old days. He checked past crime rates. This is what he found:
Changes
in the overall incidence of crime are most often measured by examining the
index crime rate, which includes the reported crimes of murder/nonnegligent
manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor
vehicle theft. The reported crime rate was fairly level during the 1930s,
1940s, and 1950s, before sharply increasing until the early 1970s. … The United
States is currently in the midst of the longest period of decline over the
entire period shown [1960 to c. 2000], with a 1998 crime rate of 4,615 per 100,000
population, the lowest since 1973, when the rate was 4,155.[8]
The
rate during the period between 1933 and 1958 was under 1,000 per 100,000, a
fraction of what it has been since 1973, which was over 4,000 per 100,000
population. The crime rate in 2014,
according to FBI statistics, was 2,596 per 100,000.[9] So in this, the old days were good.
In
this blog, a point has been made about how qualitatively different our pre- and
post-World War II years have been. As
pointed out, the nation experienced a change in the dominant political
construct by which the citizenry sees government and politics. This crime rate change is but one indicator
that this claimed change in political orientation and the nation’s sense of rights
has been real.
And as for over-zealous policy in terms
of drugs, it is known that other crimes are downplayed. Currently, the nation is being told of how
many under-reported and under-addressed cases of abuse against women and to a
lesser degree men there are in the military and on college campuses. Whether such incidents outnumber cases of
long prison sentences for drug crimes is unknowable. But no one is claiming that people in the
nation are readily going to jail and prison for legal behaviors.
Before leaving this issue of criminality
and incivility, the incidents of racism and anti-Semitism should be
mentioned. These two examples of less
than ideal attitudes or respect for fellow citizens has had an ugly history in
the US. They deserve more comment than
what is given here. The nation has made
significant advances in eliminating these dispositions, but – and this
particularly refers to racism – there are still elements of them that lead to
tragic results.[10]
In 2015 and 2016, the nation witnessed
incidents in which unarmed African-American suspects were shot and/or killed by
law enforcement agents under highly questionable circumstances. There was a mass killing by a young man in a
church where multiple victims were senselessly shot for apparently racial
reasons. While most Americans do not engage
in such behaviors and most overt racist acts do not occur in everyday life, the
level of occurrence and their antisocial qualities indicate that below the
surface, many Americans do harbor racist beliefs and values.
Such cases are complex and controversial,
but the number of cases cannot avoid being a source of supportive evidence for
the conclusion that racist attitudes exist among the populous. In most cases, when such attitudes are
expressed in overt behavior, laws are broken. This needs to be addressed in our
civics classrooms.
One can assume that they are addressed
in most classrooms, but such efforts need to be contextualized as offenses to a
general moral regime in which citizens are defined as being tied together under
a value commitment to egalitarian standards.
While a natural rights view is logically opposed to such prejudicial
behaviors, its application with its bias toward everyone doing his/her own
thing, lends to an atmosphere that tolerates such attitudes.
[1] “Record Prison Population,” CNN, March 2, 2009, accessed March 10, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/02/record.prison.population/.
[2] Roy Walmsley, “United Kingdom Report,” Home Office, UK Government, Walmsley,
accessed October 19, 2016,
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/prison-population-statistics .
[3] Gallup, “Americans Believe Crime Worsening,” Google Search, no date, accessed March
10, 2017, https://www.google.com/search?q=crime+rates+in+US+over+time&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&tbm=isch&imgil=P4g2P-obB-jlRM%253A%253BcPni19546Kal8M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.gallup.com%25252Fpoll%25252F150464%25252Famericans-believe-crime-worsening.aspx&source=iu&pf=m&fir=P4g2P-obB-jlRM%253A%252CcPni19546Kal8M%252C_&usg=__zxIEm18APlIHiED8D3gsYadxZL4%3D&ved=0CCcQyjdqFQoTCJeJut67-ccCFcY8PgodmAwJGA&ei=NUj4VdeaD8b5-AGYmaTAAQ#imgrc=P4g2P-obB-jlRM%3A&usg=__zxIEm18APlIHiED8D3gsYadxZL4%3D .
[4] “Top Ten Countries with Highest Reported Crime
Rates,” Maps of the World, no date, accessed
March 10, 2017, www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/countries-with-highest-reported-crime-rates.html
.
[5] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly” Readings for Classes Taught by Professor
Elazar (presentation materials, prepared for a National Endowment for the
Humanities Institute, Steamboat Springs,
Colorado, 1994).
[6] Ibid., 10-11.
[7] Paul Krugman, “No, Donald Trump,
America Isn’t a Hellhole,” New York Times,
Aug 26, 2016, accessed March 10, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/opinion/no-donald-trump-america-isnt-a-hellhole.html?_r=0 .
[8] “Introduction to Historical Data,” Justice Research and Statistics Association (JRSA),
2000, accessed March 10, 2017, http://www.jrsa.org/projects/Historical.pdf .
[9] “FBI Releases 2014 Crime Statistics,” Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
September 28, 2015, accessed March 10, 2017, https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2014-crime-statistics .
[10] In the “after glow” of the 2016 presidential
election, there has been an uptick in very observable incidents of anti-Semitic
cases. Most noted have been the
desecration of Jewish cemeteries.
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