Vol. 1, No. 3 , 1995, Page 3

BOOK REVIEW: CRIME

Edited by James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia.
ICS Press, San Francisco, 1995. Cloth $69.95, Paper $34.95.
Orders: 1-800-326-0263

Wilson taught for 26 years at Harvard. He is the author or co-author of 13 books, including THINKING ABOUT CRIME (1983), CRIME AND HUMAN NATURE (1985), and CRIME AND PUBLIC POLICY (1983). He chaired the White House Task Force on Crime in 1966 and the National Advisory Commission on Drug Abuse Prevention in 1972, and was on the Attorney General's Task Force on Violent Crime in 1981.

Petersilia is a professor in the School of Social Ecology, UC-Irvine. She has served as president of the American Society of Criminology and of the Association for Criminal Justice Research in California. In 1994 she received the American Society of Criminology's Vollmer Award for outstanding contributions to criminal justice policy. Petersilia has authored over 20 major studies on crime.

The 21 chapters, each written by a separate set of authors, include subjects such as Traits, Biomedical Factors, Juvenile Crime and Justice, Social Context, Schools, Labor Market, Community, Gangs, Crime Control, and the Federal Role.

There are compelling statistics showing the seriousness of the situation, and many pages of research references (120 just for the Biomedical chapter) documenting critical factors such as the link between crime and low IQ, genetic factors, and biological insults. Conversely, the authors present substantial evidence suggesting that some factors commonly blamed for high crime rates -- for instance, poverty and TV violence - - have surprisingly little influence.

Wilson notes in CRIME that six percent of boys account for half of all serious crimes. If we can reduce crime and violence in this six percent alone, the savings in lives, monetary costs, misery and sadness would be phenomenal. This book, by helping to clarify the risk factors for violence and criminal behavior, is a step in the right direction.

Quotes from CRIME:

"What we can understand, we can often improve. This has been the lesson learned from biomedical research in mental illness, substance abuse, and learning disabilities; it may in time be the lesson of research on delinquency and criminality."
James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia

"The magnitude of involvement in crime is such that analysts who once dismissed criminal behavior as a peripheral issue to employment or poverty can do so no longer. No other advanced society has as large a proportion of its potentially productive workforce involved in illegitimate activities, nor as large a proportion incarcerated."
Richard B. Freeman

"In studies... it has been established that about six percent of the boys of a given age will commit half or more of all the serious crime produced by all boys of that age.... But a puzzle arises: if six percent of the males cause so large a fraction of our collective misery, and if young males are less numerous than once was the case, why are crime rates high and rising? The answer, I conjecture, is that the traits of the six percent put them at risk for whatever criminogenic forces operate in society. Magnify those forces and the at-risk boys will respond in exaggerated fashion, though all of us will respond to some degree."
James Q. Wilson

"Current biological research suggests that treatment as benign as increased nutritional supplements for prisoners may reduce their future rates of aggression....
There is a fear that biological causes must be treated with radical medical interventions such as heavy psychopharmacological agents or even psychosurgery. This is simply not true."
Patricia A. Brennan et al.

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