PUBLIC'S FEAR OF VIOLENCE SERVES VARIED INTERESTS

Politicians, police, private firms gain by exploiting crime trends

They are on the news almost nightly: carjackers, sexual predators,
workplace gunmen, home-invasion robbers, ``road rage'' killers.

By the numbers, there are fewer and fewer of them. Yet fear of them has
held steady. That fear has overwhelmed reality, causing many Americans to
feel more threatened by crime even as the nation has become a safer place
in which to live.

The reasons for that disparity are complex, and sometimes shockingly
deliberate. Police stoke fear in part because they take crime seriously,
but also to prime their budgets; politicians feel deeply about the issue,
but also manipulate it to win votes. News organizations amplify fear by
ratcheting up their crime coverage, even as crime declines, because it
helps ratings. Security companies, theft-detection manufacturers and others
tap into deeply held fears and end up turning a profit.

In some respects, the merger of profit and political advantage has turned
the crime business into the domestic equivalent of what President
Eisenhower once described as the ``military-industrial complex.'' In that
incarnation, the fear of Soviet adventurism was real and the enemy a
dangerous one. But in their desire to combat it, military contractors,
politicians and Pentagon brass congealed into a self-sustaining system.

Similar structure

In the new version, prison-guard unions, burglar-alarm companies and
others, in effect, cooperate with politicians and police to perpetuate
public fear of a domestic enemy, in this case crime. It too presents real
dangers, but even as those dangers have waned, fear has persisted.

Crime rates notwithstanding, who today feels safer?

``Crime, particularly violent crime, is very highly concentrated . . . and
yet that feeling of fear lasts,'' said Eric Sterling, president of the
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington.

Criminologists note that, to some extent, a sense of security will lag
behind reality because fear preys on memory.

Even long after crimes occur, the names, even faces, of victims linger.
Twelve-year-old Polly Klaas is kidnapped from her bedroom, then raped and
murdered. Six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey dies of strangulation in the tidy
town of Boulder, Colo.

Police say it's not prudent to cut back on tough sentencing or a national
police buildup, because law enforcement authorities believe they are
largely responsible for declining crime. If police told people they could
relax about crime, the argument goes, violence would rebound, and the
public would be in real danger.

Some observers warn that anti-crime efforts actually can breed fear even as
they thwart crime.

``There are constantly new categories of violence,'' said Barry Glassner, a
University of Southern California sociology professor. ``For a while, it
was carjacking. . . . Now, it's `road rage.' . . . The effect of it is that
the public hears a lot about what they think is this new pressing problem.
You wouldn't have panicked three months ago, but there's more of a reason
to panic now.''

Politics and crime

Crime frequently becomes a campaign issue as politicians routinely tap into
the public's fear. In 1988, George Bush hammered Michael Dukakis for
releasing criminals into the community. In 1992, Bill Clinton won office in
part based on his pledge to put 100,000 more police officers on the
nation's streets.

But why not let a candidate boast about crime drops, about increasing
numbers of officers on the streets? The answer: That message is not as sexy
and has much less impact.

And that is nowhere more true than on television, where the adage ``If it
bleeds, it leads'' has become the catch phrase for national and local news.

Americans spent an estimated $14 billion on professionally installed
electronic security products and services last year, and more than one in
five homes in the United States and Canada had electronic alarm systems by
the end of the year.

Scare tactics

Aside from their television and print ads -- which can be graphic in
depicting lone motorists securing their cars, for instance -- some
security, alarm and lock companies regularly promote products by
manipulating crime data so crime appears to be worse.

Those who work in the industry defend their practices.

``I think we are part of the solution,'' said Dave Saddler, a
representative of the National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association in
Bethesda, Md. ``The steps people are taking to protect their communities
themselves are working. I think it's the random nature of crime -- that it
can happen any time, anywhere -- that keeps people afraid.''

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Checked-by: Pat Dolan