Many conservatives use the death penalty as some sort of barometer for haw tough a politician may be on the issue of violent crime involving murder. First off, let us examine the issue in depth. Ask your self a few questions. Has the death penalty reduced the amount of murders in the U.S.? Has the death penalty created a guaranteed way out or years or a lifetime of imprisonment? The argument could be made that the death penalty creates a fulfillment of suicidal wishes of those convicted of murder. Is the death penalty a gift to those who face the possibility of life in prison? I would ask you, is it more of a penalty to live out the rest of your life with the guilt and confinement that are associated with a murder conviction? I would argue that the death penalty is a vacation provided for by the state from a convicts mental anguish for heinous immoral acts. If conservatives are all about harsh punishment you would think they would be against the death penalty and for the murderer to be sentenced to a lifetime of watching the view, or reruns of concentration camp pictures and video 23 hours a day. Is death an escape from the thought and regret of taking another human life?
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The Crime Conundrum
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Andrew Karmen, a colleague of Kennedy's at John Jay and the author of "New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s," believes the murder rate is fueled by factors beyond the president's control. "To use Bill Clinton's phrase, 'It's the economy, stupid'," Karmen says. Having studied New York City in the age of crack, Karmen came to the conclusion that factors such as an influx of law-abiding immigrants and the booming economy helped end crack's scourge and curtail violence in the city—factors that often get overlooked when politicians praise the aggressive police tactics typically credited with cutting the homicide rate in the Big Apple. Al Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of "The Crime Drop in America," says that if Hillary Clinton reaches the White House and her administration is willing to pour enough resources into the cities it targets, she could achieve dramatic declines. But he also cautioned that the cuts in violent crime rates in the '90s were more a result of a strong economy and the end of the crack era than of policy initiatives.
Clinton says that she will rely in part on a "reinvigorated" COPS program to achieve her 50 percent cut in the murder rate. But Blumstein says that the original COPS program, a Bill Clinton initiative that put 60,000 more police officers on the street, was found by the General Accounting Office to have had a "modest" impact on violent crime.
Clinton's plan for halving the murder rate also relies on a federal initiative to crack down on illegal gun trafficking, in part by repealing a piece of legislation known as the Tiahrt Amendment (named for Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt, its main sponsor), which prevents the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from sharing gun trace data with city police departments trying to track weapons used in the commission of crimes. But that could be an uphill battle. A coalition of big-city mayors led by New York's Michael Bloomberg have been unable so far to persuade the Democratic majority in Congress to overturn the Tiahrt measure.
Clinton's crime initiative no doubt makes for good campaign politics. But translating it into policy is another matter.
© 2008
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