(8 of 10)
A legitimate concern for both white and black is the low estate of the na tion's crime-fighting apparatus. Only 22.4% of all reported offenses even resulted in arrests last year, and that percentage is falling. The nation's police are in dire need of all manner of help, and perhaps require a total redefinition of their role (see TIME ESSAY, p. 26). A study by the President's crime commission last year included a unique survey of 10,000 families that indicated many serious crimes—in some categories as many as 50%—are never reported at all.
Law breakers who are caught get little benefit from the experience in terms of rehabilitation. Accurate figures do exist on recidivism, and they are appalling. Fully 60% of those arrested have at least one prior offense on their record. For those under 20, the figure is 70%. Generally speaking, the more serious the offense, the greater the chance that the accused is a repeater. It is no new theory that the entire criminal-law and corrections apparatus is in need of major overhaul. The same case was made more than 30 years ago by the Wickersham Commission, and has periodically been reconfirmed by other expert groups.
Of jails there are plenty, yet their major function is to provide custody and punishment, not rehabilitation. There are roughly 1.3 million people in jail or on probation or parole. There are only 25,000 social workers, teachers, psychiatrists and psychologists, parole and probation officers employed to attempt to salvage them. In one recent poll, the public indicated full awareness that the nation's corrections system is a failure—and came out 2 to 1 against paying higher taxes to reform it.
Poverty's precise role in the etiology of crime is not easily assessed. Dr. Leon Radzinowicz, a leading British criminologist, pointed out last week that England and Wales have had a constantly increasing crime rate for the past 25 years, despite historic social reforms and improved economic conditions. At the same time, it is an established fact that most criminals come from slums and have limited education, and that the incidence of crime in lowincome, congested areas and among broken families is severalfold that found elsewhere.
The Keener Recommendations
At the tactical level, the Kerner commission report recommended a number of obvious steps to curb riots, such as developing greater rapport between police and the ghettos, and avoiding overreaction to very minor incidents.
The main thrust of the Kerner re port, however, was aimed at basic causes and cures. Its central thesis was that the black's adversity is attributable to white racism. That conception, while historically supportable, has only served to exacerbate the law and order fever. Nicholas Katzenbach, recalling his experience in the Justice Department, puts it this way: "In many places, we have had law and order without justice, operating extraconstitutionally. Often it is really nothing more than socially condoned violence." It is doubtful that the majority of whites will agree with a point of view that amounts to Walt Kelly's Pogoism: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Nor is it likely, given the