A SAFER PLACE

Florida's Crime Rate Continues To Drop - But Credit A Strong Economy And A
Decline In Drug Violence, Not The "Tough On Crime" Laws Passed By The
Legislature

Given that the state last year enjoyed its lowest crime rate in almost
three decades, Gov. Jeb Bush's declaration on Monday that "Florida is a
safer place" was both warranted and uplifting. His attempt to use the crime
data to validate his legislative agenda was neither.

Count how many political backs he patted with this assessment:

"This encouraging decline in crime confirms that Florida's tougher
sentencing policies, juvenile justice efforts and law enforcement agencies
are on the right track. The era of early release and lenient sentencing
laws is over. The policy of zero tolerance for crime, grounded in
mandatory-sentencing laws, including 10-20-Life, the Reoffender Punishment
Act, the Three-Strike Violent Felony Offender Act, and our 85 percent
time-served laws, is restoring communities and saving lives."

Stripped of its political preening, the government's statement does make an
important point. Sentencing laws that lock up repeat and violent offenders
do provide protection for society and keep those criminals from committing
yet more crimes. But that point doesn't begin to explain the social and
economic forces at play in Florida and the United States since the early
1970s, and it fails to recognize that law enforcement is but one influence
on the rate of crime.

"The governor's explanation is simply not plausible," says Gary Kleck, a
criminology professor at Florida State University. "You can't explain a
trend that began a decade ago with policy initiatives that began two years
ago."

You also can't make neat and clean correlations between crime and
punishment. The United States imprisons its people at a rate surpassed only
by Russia yet it has the highest rate of murder in the world. Spain has
half as many police officers and a fifth the number of prisoners per
capita, yet the United States' murder rate is five times greater. The
United States imprisons 10 times more people per capita than Japan, yet our
murder rate is seven times as great. There is virtually no research
demonstrating that tough sentencing laws deter criminals, and the most
recent examination of the "three-strikes" laws across the nation suggests
that they might actually cause robbers to be more likely to kill their victims.

What criminologists know about the crime rate is that it has been steadily
declining since about 1990, and it is most broadly explained by a strong
economy and a decline in the population of young males (who are most likely
to commit crime). There is also a less understood phenomenon relating to
drug violence. Though people seem to be using illicit drugs at a similar
rate as the 1980s, the violence and crime associated with drug transactions
has dropped dramatically. Some criminologists theorize that the drug
markets, and the gangs that control them, have stabilized.

Florida has done all the things in its criminal justice system that Gov.
Bush lauds, including building more prisons and giving longer sentences to
people who commit crime. But its best hope for continuing to be a "safer
place" has nothing to do with 10-20-Life or Zero Tolerance or Three Strikes
laws. The best hope starts in homes and families. As long as we are
building a society with opportunity and raising children into responsible,
functioning adults, we will continue to see less crime. And that's
something we can all celebrate.