Crime Isn’t the Way Flanigan Describes It

Of James Flanigan’s overview on present-day and future crime (“Social Change Cheaper Than $30-Billion Crime Bill,” Aug. 28): Mr. Flanigan’s data and thinking are seriously off the mark on several points.

First, the decline in crimes against property apparent from FBI statistics is fallacious; plea bargaining and overextended police work caused by serious financial shortfalls among America’s states, counties and municipalities--not a decline in crime--are what in fact exist.

Second, an aging society (such as ours) will not necessarily enjoy safer streets and schools, for with aging comes the calcification of the imagination, intellect, vision and courage to attempt new approaches.

Third, of drive-bys and areas normally quite light in homicides, more and more of the killers are younger and younger; a majority of experts and anointed prognosticators appear to be saying that we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Fourth, it is woeful and ironic that we have transmogrified into a society largely ruled by an ethos distrustful of and hostile toward empirical evidence, the scientific method and the medical model--we who pride ourselves and take comfort in our scientific and medical technologies and prowess. A return to the mid-1950s’ criminal and juvenile justice laws and protocols that gave Californians a civility and optimism envied by the people of every other state in America will be achieved only when our politicians, jurists and prince-makers are willing to subordinate the gambits and shtick of callow, profit-driven attorneys to the peer-reviewed literature, objective facts and responsible expert opinion of licensed clinicians, social workers and physicians.

Until that day, we shall endure being a land unsafe for children at play, at school or just eating pizza at the beach, and for oldsters on their way to the market or pharmacy, and for market clerks doing their damnedest, and for stressed-out police officers.

KENNETH S. BREMAN

La Mesa