WAR ON CRIME: WRITER SEES FLAWS IN STATE, FEDERAL EFFORTS

CRIME AND POLITICS: Big Government's Erratic Campaign for Law and Order, by
Ted Gest; Oxford University Press, $30.

Last year the federal government spent $5 billion on cops, courts, and
corrections. According to Ted Gest, a former journalist and now a criminal
justice professor at the University of Pennsylvania, most federal crime
programs were ineffective. Here he examines measures implemented over the
past 35 years, such as three-strikes-you're-out laws, mandatory minimum
sentencing, community policing, and others. He concludes that ideological
differences, inconsistent leadership, and partisan politics have resulted
in futile efforts for federal - and even some state - crime-fighting efforts.

FOR EXAMPLE, with respect to the nation's high-priority drug war, he
writes, "But when it comes to drugs, as with many of the other major fronts
in America's war on crime, credible explanations of whether enforcement,
treatment, or prevention are accomplishing much are sadly lacking."

Likewise, the federal government's effort to counter gun violence is
dismissed. Gest writes, "The plain fact is that many gun controls, whatever
their political impact, have only a marginal effect on firearms violence."
Yet in describing Richmond's Project Exile, he mentions in passing that
murders dropped 33 percent, but fails to comment on this dramatic success.

In addition, mandatory minimums and other sentencing reforms such as
three-strikes-you're-out and parole abolition are analyzed this way: "A
national movement to tinker with sentencing laws probably did some good,
but often at the expense of rationality and fairness."

HOWEVER, Gest finds it difficult to explain the unprecedented drop in crime
of the past five years, resulting in the lowest crime rate in 40 years. He
says, "When the statistics say lawbreaking is declining, as they did in the
late 1990s, anything and everything seems responsible. That includes more
patrol officers, expanded prisons, community organizing, bureaucratic
overhauls, fancy burglar alarms, midnight basketball, McGruff the Crime
Dog, and all sorts of treatment or counseling programs."

Gest's style is journalistic rather than scholarly. He compiles
blow-by-blow histories of programs such as the Law Enforcement Assistance
Agency, and relies heavily on interviews with key decision-makers and
influential thinkers such as Senator Ted Kennedy and former Assistant
Attorney General Laurie Robinson. He also consults conservative
commentators such as James Q. Wilson and John D'Iulio.

Crime and Politics offers a comprehensive account of federal crime-fighting
efforts, but it is weak in its analysis of exactly how these programs
relate to the current drop in the crime rate.