ABSTRACT
There is relatively little the police can do about crime. We are not letting the public in on our era’s dirty little secret; that those who commit the crime which worries citizens most – violent street crime – are, for the most part, the products of poverty, unemployment, broken homes, rotten education, drug addiction and alcoholism, and other social and economic ills about which the police can do little, if anything. Rather than speaking up, most of us stand silent and let politicians get away with law and order rhetoric that reinforces the mistaken notion that the police – in ever greater numbers and with ever more gadgetry – can alone control crime.
