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36 How. J. Crim. Just. 1 (1997)

handle is hein.journals/hjcj36 and id is 1 raw text is: The Howard Journal Vol 36 No 1. Feb 97 ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 1-13 What the Next Government Should Do About Crime DAVID DOWNES Professor of Social Administration, London School of Economics Abstract: Criminology is well enough stocked with theory and evidence to offer governments important leads on how to address problems of crime and criminal careers more effectively. Three basic assumptions can be made: that informal social controls are more influential in regulating conduct than formal measures; that social, economic and cultural sources of crime are more potent than either genetic or criminal justice variables; and that, following Beccaria, certainty ofpunishment is more effective than severity. These assumptions, combined with five basic data on the prevalence of crime, are the context for recommending eight sets of priorities for governmental action. Crime is a vast, complex and ill-charted array of activities, clumped together on the sole common denominator that they are infractions of the criminal law. There is no one theory, and no neat solution, that begins to encompass them all. Crime patterns and trends display both continuities and changes, but it is often far from easy to say what is new and what is not. Despite these caveats, three broad assumptions have substance as a basis for policy: (i) Informal social controls are far more effective than formal social control. The informal regulation of conduct in families, communities, friendship networks and voluntary associations is the pre-condition for law and order. Formal social control - the work of the police, courts and pris- ons - buttresses the informal, structures discretion, and - ideally - achieves justice by due process. A key function of the criminal justice system is to prevent the excesses of informal control, which can in extremis mean lynch law. There are, however, areas of regulation where formal controls have worked effectively to bolster weak informal controls. For example, compulsory seat belts, MoT testing and stiff penalties against drinking and driving have reduced road deaths significantly despite huge increases in traffic. (ii) Social, economic and cultural sources of crime are of much more causal significance than the operation of the criminal justice system. Large comparative variations in the rate and character of crime between societies, and within societies over time, cannot be addressed at all adequately by genetic variables or the resources devoted to formal social control. For example, rates of violent crime, including homicide, remain several times higher in the USA than in the UK, despite the reintroduction of capital 1 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

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