Contents
Aggression control — various recommendations
There is no need to repeat the grim statistics. The sad fact for everyone is quite obvious: violent crimes are invariably becoming more frequent. How can a society reduce the appalling number of cases of violence that worries them so much? What can we — government, police, citizens, parents and caregivers, all of us together — do to make our social world better, or at least safer? See →
Using punishment to deter violence
Many educators and mental health professionals condemn the use of punishment as an attempt to influence children’s behavior. Proponents of non-violent methods question the morality of using physical violence, even for the social good. Other experts insist that the effectiveness of punishment is unlikely. Offended victims, they say, may be put on hold in their condemned acts, but the suppression will only be temporary. According to this view, if a mother spanks her son for fighting with his sister, the boy may stop being aggressive for a while. However, the possibility is not ruled out that he will hit the girl again, especially if he believes that his mother will not see him do it. See →
Does punishment deter violence?
Basically, the threat of punishment seems to reduce the level of aggressive attacks to some level — at least in certain circumstances, although the fact is not as obvious as one would like. See →
Does the death penalty deter murder?
How about maximum punishment? Will the number of murders in society decrease if murderers face the death penalty? This issue is hotly debated.
Various kinds of research have been carried out. States were compared that differed in their policies towards the death penalty, but were similar in their geographic and demographic characteristics. Sellin says the threat of the death penalty does not seem to affect the state’s homicide rate. States that used the death penalty did not, on average, have fewer murders than states that did not use the death penalty. Other studies of the same kind mostly came to the same conclusion. See →
Does gun control reduce violent crime?
Between 1979 and 1987, about 640 gun crimes were committed annually in America, according to figures provided by the US Department of Justice. Over 000 of these crimes were murders, over 9000 were rapes. In more than half of the murders, they were committed with weapons used in an argument or fight rather than a robbery. (I will talk more about the use of firearms later in this chapter.) See →
Gun control — responses to objections
This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the many gun controversy publications, but it is possible to answer the above objections to gun control. I will start with the widespread assumption in our country that guns provide protection, and then return to the statement: “guns do not kill people” — to the belief that firearms in themselves do not contribute to the commission of crimes.
The NSA insists that legally owned firearms are more likely to save American lives than to take them away. The weekly Time magazine disputed this claim. Taking one week at random in 1989, the magazine found that 464 people were killed by firearms in the United States over a seven-day period. Only 3% of deaths resulted from self-defense during an attack, while 5% of deaths were accidental and nearly half were suicides. See →
Summary
In the United States, there is agreement on possible methods of controlling criminal violence. In this chapter, I have considered the potential effectiveness of two methods: very severe penalties for violent crimes and outlawing firearms. See →
Chapter 11
There is no need to repeat the grim statistics. The sad fact for everyone is quite obvious: violent crimes are invariably becoming more frequent. How can a society reduce the appalling number of cases of violence that worries them so much? What can we — government, police, citizens, parents and caregivers, all of us together — do to make our social world better, or at least safer? See →