Crimes That Dont Count

...The truth is that we have been taught to think of crime in the most narrow terms— terms that conveniently exclude the activi-ties of our society's most powerful people...

...In fact, it grossly ig-nores the real, underlying biases and pre-sumptions of American criminal justice, and, therefore, the real problem...

...Should we add the scalpel to our list of lethal weapons...

...On the other hand, a mine owner acts with great forethought in sending workers Underground each day without first installing safety devices that could avert death and injury...

...This readily competes with our 3,600 annual stabbing deaths...

...Surely, they think, a little loss will not hurt a supermarket chain or department st?re...

...So why has it not been defined as crime...

...Last spring, both Time and Newsweek featured cover stories on crime...

...One response could be that while workplace hazards and prescription drugs may produce violence and death, they are not in-tended to do so...

...Do we make these fundamental transformations, or do we live with our cliches, failed reforms, and likely a knife—or scalpel—at our throats...

...there are no Statistical differences in the rates of criminality among rieh and poor, although it is arguable that the latter surely have far greater reason to commit crimes...

...What we need to do is make fundamental, systemic changes that diminish or abolish unrestrained competition, community and family fragmentation, alienation, and inequality...

...Robert Elias teaches in the department of political science at Tufts University...

...Business competition, for one thing, gives an air of legitimaey to shady deals made in the name of maintaining profit margins...

...We've heard it all before: Violence is the work of "professional criminals," a sm?ll group of repeat offenders who hold the rest of us hostage...

...What causes our extensive lawlessness...

...And the "reformed" and repressive Federal Criminal Code now has the best Chance of passing since changes were first suggested in the 1960s...

...Some of these acts are, in-deed, violent...

...Each year, workplace in-juries cause 14,200 deaths—almost all of which are preventable by safety devices...

...Yet studies have shown that lawbreaking is, in fact, epi-demic in all classes...

...Crime is an aecommodation by some to the economic realities of our society...

...Unable to cope with demands that we sueeeed and consume at high levels, we vent our frustration in crime, often violent crime...

...All of these deaths are also preventable...

...Yet the irrational act is deemed a crime, while the mine owner is thought to be using good business sense...

...In fact, however, the'vast majority of violent, common crimes are not premeditated...

...Examples of ignored violence abound in our society...

...It might be difficult to ad-mit, but in fact we are a society of law-breakers...

...conviction, and punishment...

...What, then, explains crime among the rieh...

...Improper emer-gency care, Reiman writes, kills 20,000 people each year, and unnecessary Operations claim 16,000 lives...

...Moreover, about 350,000 people die yearly of Cancer, and scientists now teil us that between 60 and 90 per cent of those cases result from preventable, environmental sources such as chemicals...

...It has been estimated that 22 per.cent of our prescriptions are unnecessary, and improper drug use causes an additional 2,000 to 10,000 deaths every year...

...Time magazine, in its analysis, gave a token nod to the "social ills of poverty, ignorance, racism, and the disintegration of the family," but placed f?ll blame on the criminal-justice System, as if crime were merely an administrative problem...

...But our preoccupation with rape, murder, and the other index crimes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports diverts our attention from many other acts of violence which are not even talked about, much less made criminal...

...In fact, unremit-ting and extensive poverty and racism really are sources of crime, and in economically strained times, more crimes are committed...

...The same bias that defines what is criminal in the first place determines how the law will be applied, and so middle and upper classes are far less subject to arrest...

...Chief Justice Warren Burger has called for new toughness in dealing with violence...

...These are the major sources of crime in America, and they produce lawbreaking at all levels...

...If you are poor, and have little access to the more sophisticated means of stealing money to survive—or to pay for drugs which the upper classes can afford on their payehecks and even, in some cases, pur-chase legally—you will resort to violent and illegal ones...

...Attorney General William French Smith has announced that violent crime is the Reagan Admin-istration's primary criminal-justice concern...

...The governor of my State of Massachusetts, Edward King, has proposed strict sanctions on crime, as well as extensive expansions of the state's prison system...

...The way, then, to reduce the level of crime in our society is not through reform of juvenile justice Systems, police-community relations, or sentencing practices...

...Jeffrey Reiman of American University did just that, comparing it with the threat posed by so-called "common crimes...

...Finally, we have created a society that is alienating for rieh and poor, plutocrat and pauper...

...This is an alarming and considerable number, but it pales when compared to deaths on the job...

...And yet this latter kind of violence poses a far greater threat to our lives and limbs than the isolated, ugly acts that fit our Standard definition of crime...

...Consider, for instance, violence in the workplace...

...This analysis, of course, con-stitutes the ageless practice of blaming "bad apples," implying that if we can just put away the few hardened criminals, then the system will be cleansed...

...How about the syringe, or the prescription...

...Or take health care...

...We tend to emphasize the crimes of only some Americans—those of the lower and working classes...

...nor is it through building more prisons and putting more people in them...

...Even without pressing economic incentive, many people are alienated by our large and oppressive social institutions...

...In one year, he wrote in his recent book, The Rieh Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class and Criminal Justice, a liberal estimate of the number of deaths caused by common crimes was 20,000...

...In his book, Reiman argues that although ending this kind of violence would be expensive, we would hardly claim that it was too expensive to fight a foreign invader that killed 1,000 people a day and that would kill, over the years, one out of every four Americans...

...they are committed in moments of anger or fear...

...In addition, 100,000 people die annually of diseases that can be traced to coal tar, dust, asbestos, and other substances...

...One of these biases shows up in the way we define violent crime in the first place...

...It is easier to rip off a stranger, especially if the stranger is not even a person...

...A death result-ing from a common crime may occur every twenty-six minutes in the United States, but a death resulting from a preventable industrial cause occurs every four minutes...

...Is permitting hazards in the workplace truly a lesser crime than street violence...