Deterrence

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Errol T. Louis may disagree with my views, but before he attempts to persuade your readers to disagree with them also, he should attempt to state them accurately. Instead, he has produced a gross caricature.

Louis's claim: "Wilson favors crackdowns over programs designed to alleviate unemployment, poverty, and other commonly presumed causes of crime." [10/4/83] False. What I said in the article Louis supposedly read is as follows: "Despite the uncertainty that attaches to the connection between the economy and crime. I believe that the wisest course of action for society is to try to increase the benefits of non-criminal behavior [i.e., jobs] and the costs of crime simultaneously, all the while bearing in mind that no feasible change in either part of the equation is likely to produce big changes in crime rates." [Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1983, pp. 83-84]

In the book from which the article was taken, I add: "there is no contradiction between taking crime seriously and taking poverty (or other social disadvantages) seriously. There is no need to choose ... Raising the costs of crime while leaving the benefits of non-crime [i.e., jobs] untouched may be as short-sighted" as doing the opposite [Thinking About Crime, rev., ed., 1983, p.251]. "Reducing poverty and breaking up the ghettoes are desirable policies in their own right, whatever their effects on crime." [ibid., p. 252].

Louis's claim: I and my co-author, George Kelling, "propose that police officers return to the good old pre-Warren Court days, when chasing out the 'undesirables' meant using the old nightstick to keep the neighborhood under control" and that Kelling and I advise police officers to "kick ass." [Crimson, Oct. 4]. False. In our article [Atlantic Monthly, March, 1982], we do not urge anyone to kick anybody anywhere; we instead quote a Chicago police officer who described how he dealt with juvenile gangs in a public housing project.

Despite the fact that the all-Black residents of the project knew and approved of this policy, we added the following comment: "None of this is easily reconciled with any conception of due process or fair treatment." We continued by pointing out the difficult ethical and legal issues that arise whenever the police try to maintain order and the evidence--mixed, at best--as to the effect of that effort. To link, as Mr. Louis then does, selective misquotations from our writings to instances of police brutality, torture, and shootings so as to suggest that we endorse these practices is not only irresponsible, but unconscionable.

In a book Louis claims to be familiar with. I say this on the relationship between court restraints on police behavior and crime rates: "We have chosen, as I think we should, to have a wide-ranging bill of rights, but we must be willing to pay the price of that choice," including, if necessary, "a somewhat higher level of crime and disorder than we might otherwise have." [Thinking About crime, rev. cd., 1983.p. 260].

To deal with crime, we do not need to choose between deterrence and social melioration as ways of dealing with crime or to abandon essential civil liberties; that view is made explicit in my book. Mr. Louis, wishing to write a polemic, chose to ignore what I have said and the evidence I have reviewed in order to associate me with a political position he can then deplore. I urge those who have read Mr. Louis to read what I wrote and to make up their own minds. James Q. Wilson   Shattuck Professor of Government

Editor's Note: Errol T. Louis's article When the Tough Get Going (10/4/83) quotes the phrase "kick ass" not from James Q. Wilson's writings but from the lecture delivered by Wilson and George L. Kelling to the Command Staff of the New York City Police Department.