Criminals and Victims, byLois G. Forer
Bishop, JosephW Jr.
BOOKS IN REVIEWS - "Criminals and Victims, by Lois G.
...By the same token, too many have utterly unrealistic expectations of walking straight into the executive suite-and aren't interested in work that they regard as "menial...
...B O O K R E V I E W S oQogQQOwQ0000OQ00O800~Q0000iQ0D~oUO900~000Q000O0000Q00~0600g0QQ0QQm00QQm000OmQQ000000000QO0000mm0mQmm00m0~QQmooDQPO00O0QQ0POO0Q0OQ00O000OQO080O00Q0OQ9QQ0Q00QQ Criminals and Victims is the latest addition to the extensive library stacks of books that attempt to expound their authors' notions on the causes and cures of crime, t~a_rticuo larly violent crime...
...It is a tribute to human nature that most young slum blacks are not criminal, or at least not very criminal...
...She even trots out the hoary chestnut that pickpockets regularly worked the crowds watching hangings...
...The observation was not entirely true even in 1.944, for black swindlers were by no means unheard of...
...Convicts who found the idea of daily labor cruel and unusual and indignantly refused to cooperate might be given the alternative of solitary confinement and/or bread and water...
...But the idea is not really very useful, for (as she recognizes, when she comes down to earth after a euphoric description of a case in which the idea actually worked) only a minuscule percentage of violent criminals employed or employable...
...and violators of pure food and drug taws whose products cause cancer, physical and mental defi)rmities, and other diseases in tens of thousands of people...
...The schools are there, but they cannot educate children who do not come to school or who, 'if they do come, do not try to learn...
...Her vantage point differs significantly, as of course it should, from those of the prosecutor, the criminal, and the victim--all of whom have written books, too...
...Forer's better sense is, as a practical matter, similarly flawed...
...Happiness came off him...
...I am quite sure that Dame Rebecca supposed nothing of the sort: She was simply using a common English idiom...
...She is outraged by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's use of the phrase "benign neglect," which she says is "like every oxymoron, as Webster's dictionary declares, 'pointedly foolish.'" Not my Webster, which gives as examples of the oxymoron two phrases which are far from foolish: "thunderous silence" and "sweet sorrow...
...Most slum punks could hardly have become anything but what they are...
...Wild rhetoric, which she would be too shrewd to believe if it were directed at street crime, she eagerly gulps down when it is directed at Caucasian businessmen...
...This is undoubtedly true if what we want is retribution, and I do myself feel rather vindictive about embezzlers, securities swindlers, and corrupt officeholders...
...Certainly the percentage is higher among slum blacks than in the black population generally...
...An example of sense: She knows that even the most profound and incomprehensible legal philosophers, criminologists, and sociologists are of small use to a judge who has to decide what to do with a flesh-andblood criminal standing before her-for instance, a welfare cheat of whom the prosecutor would like to make a horrible example, but who is a good mother to her numerous (and, of course, fatherless)offspring...
...All this said, most of Cmminals and Victims is entertaining, not very heavyweight, reading, and some of it is instructive...
...She argues that the ideal punishment would also compensate the viclim, by setting the criminal to productive labor, with a substantial part of his earnings being turned over to his Joseph W. Bishop, Jr., is Richard Ely Professor o fLaw at Yale University...
...Jobs for the unskilled, or even the inexperienced, aren't easy to find in today's central cities...
...their friends are also on the street...
...Although some crimes are so brutal that one is tempted to think in terms of the instigation of the Devil and retributive justice...
...Few would disagree...
...Hunter Thompson, Tom Wicker, Anthony Lewis, and Norman Mailer were all successfully courted by Carter...
...Judge Forer feels that affluent, educated lawbreakers should go to prisons just as unpleasant for periods just as long as poor, black street criminals...
...It may also be noted that she seems to know almost nothing about corporations (except that they are evil) and corporation law...
...The meaning, if any, of the second clause of her sentence, that huge profits can be made by dividing stock into different classes, is beyond me, although I have been teaching corporation law since 1957...
...Slum youths can't or won't commute or move to another state for a job that pays only entrylevel wages, even if it also offers training and a chance of promotion...
...That's not an insight Wicker is likely to boast about these days...
...Her use of "[sic]" apparently reflects the hyperliberal notion that the word "Negro" is somehow a racial slur...
...There is some sense in Criminals and Victims, along with a somewhat smaller quantity of nonsense...
...If confinement can help to rehabilitate the convict by teaching him a lawful skill, so much the better...
...Now he must pay the penalty...
...The law permits a corporate officer to reap profits from inside knowledge or from division of stock into different classes so long as there is ' d i s c l o s u r e . ' " In the first place information which is disclosed ceases to be "inside...
...A final example "of Mrs...
...It is safe to say that racism is weaker today than it was 20 years ago...
...And for those willing to slog through 546 pages of Carteriana, Betty Glad will reward you with convincing "documentation of this, along with a lode of piquant details (for starters, try Carter's recollection of meeting Otis Redding in the 1970s, though the black singer died in 1967...
...Even if they dld, that proves very little about the incidence of crime and the deterrent effect of punishment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when criminal statistics were virtually non-existent...
...Racial discrimination may be one reason, but it is surely not the only one, nor even the most important...
...Well, don't get your hopes up, John...
...compelling explanation...
...Today the discrepancy is much greater--37 percent among blacks, 17 percent of whites...
...The jobless rate for those without high-school degrees is 31 percent, for those with such degrees 21 percent, for those with college degrees 17 percent--whereas only 16 percent of white high-school dropouts are unemployed...
...Carter's stance toward opponents had a strong and favorable impact on voters in 1976 and again this year...
...Judge Forer does not extend her idea to such a logical conclusion...
...victim...
...She seems to be unclear in her own mind a~s to the definition of "white collar...
...Carter has been unmasked before, with all his petty maneuverings and palpable inadequacies 9b ared, and it has come to naught...
...Many experts think that these figures understate the problem...
...Although I suspect that what really irked Mrs.eForer was Dame Rebecca's disrespect for that self-effacing patriot, the ostensible ground of her criticism is the English w r i t e r ' s deplorable ignorance of law in supposing that for every offense there is a fixed and mandatory penalty...
...The evidence does not support the idea that the ignorance and illiteracy of slum youth is the fault of the schools and teachers...
...Forer, like most liberals (not, however, including Justice Brandeis, Who said that "the right to be let alone is the right most valued by civilized men"), believes that it is sinful to leave other people to their own devices, when she obviously knows what is good for them so much better than they do...
...the owners and managers of improperly constructed and operated nuclear plants...
...One final example...
...But emotional humanitarians, of whom there are still millions, would treat such distinctions as mere sophistry...
...In short, whenever Judge Forer leaves the firm ground of her judicial experience, she is likely to indulge in liberal piffle of the most preposterous variety...
...Forer's obvious belief that it is pointless to punish most street criminals for being evil...
...Actually the motivation of the Watergate crimes was not commercial: Some of the criminals, notably John Dean, made substantial sums by publishing their confessions and the joyful news of their redemption through Jesus, but there was nothing unlawful or "ill-gotten" about their royalties...
...He's really a rough, tough, gut-fighting politician...
...JIMMY CARTER IN SEARCH OF THE GREAT WHITE HOUSE Betty Glad / Norton / $19.95 Fred Barnes John B. Anderson, the cleanfingernail presidential candidate, mused early in the fall campaign that Jimmy Carter would soon be "unmasked in all his glory as just another fellow who is using any tactic that he can to hang on to a political job...
...The poor immigrant families of the past desperately wanted their children to rise in the world and were Convinced that they could do it by education, thrift, and hard work...
...Wicker assumed Carter shared his concern for the downtrodden, if only because he and Carter came from small Southern towns...
...CRIMINALS AND VICTIMS Lois G. Forer / Norton / $14.95 Joseph W. Bishop,Jr...
...Out of this they projected "fantasies" (her word) about what a great president Carter would be...
...She classifies as "whi~e c0tlar," for example, the Brothers Berrigan, who_were neither nonviolent nor sophisticated...
...The children of the Welfare Culture have no religious or family tradition of work and self-improvement, nor do their white liberal mentors urge such ideas on them--though the Reverend Jesse Jackson does, and with some success...
...I feet reasonably sure that I can detect in Jimmy Carter what I long ago recognized in myself--an indelible class sense, ingrained in us while growing up in the South during the Depression, and fundamentally unaltered by later affluence," Wicker wrote...
...Similarly we sh.ould not lock up muggers and rapists ]i~ any spirit of moral condemnation, but simply because their-liberty threatens the rest of us, because if punishment can be made reasonably swift and certain (not necessarily harsher), it undoubtedly has a deterrent effect, and perhaps because retribution makes the victim feel that justice has been done...
...We do not trap rats because they are wicked, butbecause they are (from oui: standpoint) a nuisance and a menace...
...It is apparent to me," she pronounces, "that the way to reduce street crime in the cities is to raise the level of literacy and education so that we do not have a large population of idle, unemployed young men who find themselves deprived of all the desirable material things they see around them...
...On the other hand, she has no criticism of Daniel Ellsberg, that paragon of radical chic, and indeed has the i.ncredible chutzpah to berate Rebecca West for say, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 ?,5 ing of him, "He has violated the law...
...What would happen to them while she does six months in the cooler...
...The businesses with the entry-level jobs have moved to the suburbs or the sunbelt...
...Carter, in her view, has "an almost uncanny ability to influence how people interpreted him...
...If these crimes are largely unreported, how does she know that there are countless, or even tens of thousands of, victims...
...Forer is full of righteous indignation where white-collar criminals are concerned...
...TA[ .i[-].ow, after all, has Jimmy Carter managed to pull offso many escapes...
...Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., which held that a corporate officer (or anyone else) who buys or sells securities on the strength of inside information violates Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and must at a minimum cough up all his profits and perhaps pay damages to every investor who lost money by buying or selling without knowledge of the inside information...
...9 Glad, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois, has a Fred Barnes is a nationa/ political reporter for the Baltimore Sun...
...Their wages (less a reasonable percentage to give some incentive to the convicts) would go to a general fund for the compensation of victims, including the victims of crimes whose perpetrators are unknown (that is, most crimes) or crimes with no particular, identifiable victim, suchas the wholesaling of heroin...
...The Caucasians hav.e the advantage of a long family tradition of finding and keeping jobs: They are job-wise, as the youth from the Welfare Culture is not...
...I suspect that Mrs...
...But moral guilt is not really relevant to the problem of crime and punishment in modern, urban A/nerica...
...This is possibly or probably true, but how do you do it...
...Nor do they know what skills are saleable: Those who know enough to sign up for machine-shop training can usually get work~ Of those who do try to get an education, too many follow a college-preparatory track, don't go to college, and wind up with no marketable skill...
...But Judge Forer ignores the fact that blacks have in the last couple of decades moved into white-collar crime...
...Still more dis34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 couraging, the figures demonstrate that while education does improve a young black's chance of employment, the improvement is far from dramatic...
...But as a general proposition the incarceration of such offenders is not necessary to the public safety: Most of them cease to be dangerous when they are exposed, though the stiff sentence imposed on Michele Sindona is likely to have a salutary effect on other high financiers who may be tempted to similar acts of fraud and larceny...
...Even if such a thought crossed her mind she is an experienced enough politician to recognize its total impossibility...
...Its quality is probably somewhat above the average, for Mrs...
...Thus, I am in accord with Mrs...
...The Mafia is not an equal-opportunity employer, at least in its upper echelons, but there are black tycoons, who display considerable administrative and merchandising ability, in the drug, gambling, and prostitution industries...
...On the other hand, Mrs...
...Perhaps it is time for rehabilitation of that halfforgotten and almost disgraced American, Booker T. Washington...
...In particular, she condemns the relatively lenient seritencing of white, middleor upper-class convicts, especially "the Watergate felons" who were allowed to keep their "ill-gotten gains...
...Lack of education is plainly not the main reason that so many young blacks are on the street for lack of anything better to do and under overwhelming peer pressure to adopt street culture, where keeping busy means hustling drugs, pimping, stealing with or without violence...
...The kids on the streets, unlike the kids in the suburbs++don't get jobs through friends who are already working...
...It was as if he knew that God had given him intelligence and good work that would make sense, and so he could give his strength to the world and get new strength back...
...Her vision is closer to stereoscopic: than theirs...
...Her book is at once the most impressive of the dozen or so volumes written about Carter--none of the others was a tough act to follow--and a very depressing chronicle indeed...
...I have known more than one liberal appointee to the bench who found himself, much to his own surprise, handing out stiff raps without a single pang of conscience...
...Her instincts and inclinations are " l i b e r a l , " but she is one more demonstration of the fact that even the warmest and most compassionate sympathy for criminals is unlikely to survive prolonged experience of them and their victims...
...The other reasons, which Judge Forer doesnot consider, can be concisely stated...
...In 1960, 24 percent of young (16-19) blacks were unemployed, against 13 percent of their white contemporaries...
...She cites no authority, not even Ralph Nader...
...Forer's point of view is that of an experienced trial judge ina busy Philadelphia criminal court...
...More to the point, so long as honest dues-payers cannot find jobs, unions would bitterly and successfully resist private employers' use of prison labor.-We are left with the traditional license plates and mailbags, which are not enough to keep busy even that small part of the criminal population which is actually apprehended, convicted, and jailed...
...Nor is Mailer likely to recall fondly his conclusions a f t e r a summer 1976 visit to Plains: "His [Carter's] aura was hardly the same as other people's...
...Uncounted billions have been spent on urban schools, far more than was ever spent on the slum children of 50 or 100 years ago--most of whom became educated, productive, and law-abiding men and women...
...I speak of this precious pair in the past tense, because I don't know whether they are still criminally inclined...
...The fact is that Judge Forer seems not to know much about white-collar criminals, who probably do not appear in her courtroom very often...
...The plain fact, which Judge Forer, like most liberals, overlooks, is that the slum of 1980--which they usually call a "ghetto"--is a fundamentally different and more hopeless place than the slum of 1850 or 1880 or 1920...
...The Welfare Mom of today does not typically inculcate in her children the Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish work ethic...
...As a practical matter, the only treatment guaranteed to cure the average convict of his criminous proclivities is a streiched neck...
...It may be noted in passing that she quotes Gunnar Myrdal for the proposition that "Negroes [sic] do not commit white collar crimes...
...I infer that Judge Forer has managed to remain ignorant of the landmark decision in SECv...
...I assume that the ordinary reader will not have much trouble sorting out the intelligent parts from the pishposh...
...The Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas tries civil cases too, but Judge Forer has little to say about this end of her business...
...For one thing, liberals would be quick to point out a superficial but unpleasant resemblance to Krupp's use of concentration camp labor forty years ago...
...They get their values from their peers, and their peers do not see much point in school work...
...Another example: Unlike the learned and progressive draftsmen of the American Law I n s t i t u t e ' s Model Penal 9 Code, she knows that " r e h a b i l i t a - tion" is rarely a justification for punishment...
...This attitude is encouraged by a lot of white liberals, although not, I suspect, by Judge Forer...
...There are, of course, obvious differences between forcing men who are guilty of no crime to labor under inhuman conditions for no wages and such prison labor as above suggested: The Thirteenth Amendment forbids "involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted...
...Here is a specimen: Corporate and white collar crimes cause infinitely more havoc, misery and death than street crimes...
...These problems are, if anything, harder to solve than getting better education to young potential criminals...
...These crimes cost at least $400 billion a year . . . . One should include in this category of crimes which are largely unreported and rarely prosecuted a number of other white-dominated groups [sic] such as manufacturers of machinery which is unsafe and causes mutilation and death to countless people...
...I think people will catch on that he's not the sweet, little, sanctimonious fellow that he's always wanted people to think he is...
...Some of these mistakes are, of course, made by young whites, but probably not nearly so often...
...She accepts unproven and unprovable assertions with naive credulity...
...To this end they labored in sweatshops or with picks, shovels, and hods...
...He has slithered to safety every time, only to return with a new mask or persona and, to borrow...
...In 1976, both journalists, especially liberal ones, and voters proved to be susce~atible to Carter's forceful personality, goodygoody morality, and uplifting but ambiguous campaign themes...
...Moreover, even if the slum youth does take the education which is offered him, he may still have trouble finding a job...
...Judge Forer, who overlooks the fact that most crimes go unpunished, d0wnplays the deterrent effect of punishment...
...Ronald Reagan's slogan, a new beginning...
...The idea might work if, say, manufacturers could establish assembly lines in penitentiaries, with inmates receiving at least the minimum hourly wage and more if they deserve it...
...For liberals and Northerners, he was the moderate Southern alternative to Wallace--the man who could defeat the Alabaman on his turf and 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980...
Vol. 13 • November 1980 • No. 11
