Criminal Negligence linked on Editorials

“Since 1960 crime has risen, fallen, and risen again… The changes were especially pronounced in New York, America’s most populous city and, as the nation’s media center, most prominent.” William Voegeli writes a long article but a very short history of the crime rate in the United States from 1963 to today, describes how it rose and fell, what policies were implemented in response, and how politicians reacted. This is well worth the read.

And part of that is knowing who Joseph Fournier was. Just about everyone who pays attention to politics knows the name of Willie Horton, but not the seventeen-year-old who Horton stuffed into a garbage can to bleed to death after stabbing him repeatedly.

“Democrats’ denunciations of Bush for condemning the Massachusetts furlough program were paired with their silence about Dukakis creating the issue. Very few liberal politicians, columnists, or editorialists offered an opinion as to whether the Massachusetts policy was a wise one…”