Opinion: Time to Get Smart About Crime

(March 30) -- If you watch a lot of late-night television or even just read a lot of newspapers, you might think the nation has a massive crime problem, that there are more murders, muggings and general mayhem than ever before. You would be in some very good -- and very fearful -- company. According to one recent poll, 74 percent of Americans believe that crime got worse over the past year.

But that perception is not vaguely accurate. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Violent crime has been steadily declining for years, and the murder rate in the U.S. is now about the same as it was in the 1960s. Some crimes like car theft have dropped more than 18 percent over the past year, according to the FBI.

What's to explain this maddening gap?

In many ways, the problem is a simple one: Our nation has painfully simplistic perceptions of crime and criminal justice. We watch far too much "America's Most Wanted"; we spend way too much time gawking at reruns of "The Sopranos." And without a firm grip on what's happening within our nation's courthouses and prisons, we will not solve the pressing problems that do in fact threaten our future.

Indeed, what's clear is that our nation's biggest criminal justice challenge isn't a surging wave of crime, but a deeply dysfunctional justice system that is not effective, moral or even sustainable.

Our nation imprisons one out of every 100 adults, more than any other country in the world. One in nine young African-American men are behind bars, with more black men going to prison than serving in the military or graduating from college. In a country that hails itself as the land of the free, we send a greater proportion of our population to jail than either Russia or China.

At the same time, too many of those in prison would be far better served elsewhere. Some are drug offenders who need treatment rather than jail. Others are simply mentally ill. Our approach to justice is not thoughtful or methodical, and examples of absurd jail sentences have become so commonplace that they're not even news anymore

And as our country struggles out of the greatest economic downturn in decades, we simply can't afford a penal system that eats up $70 billion a year and forces some states to spend more on jails than on higher education. The issue has become particularly pressing as California plans to release more than 6,000 inmates to help balance the state's crippled budget.

It's easy to blame the media for the fact that our nation has not engaged with this issue. Except that wrong-headed and misleading portrayals of crime are everywhere, from the latest video games to the hottest new music albums.

There is reason for hope. Some reformers have begun to tackle the issue. In Congress, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., has proposed a blue-ribbon commission to study the nation's criminal justice system, and the Senate Judiciary Committee recently voted to move forward with the initiative.

But for the nation's broken prison system -- and the safety and freedom of American citizens -- we must do more. Because for our country's future, we don't need to get tough on crime, we need to get smart.

Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of "The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft."


To submit an op-ed to AOL News, write to opinion@aolnews.com.