With each passing day since the Sandy Hook tragedy, we hold our children tight, tuck them into their beds, and grieve for the parents who will never kiss another sleeping cheek. Then we wonder. How safe are our children? Could this happen to our babies? In our communities?
The questions are natural, and the answers seem frightening.
The first lesson that any law enforcement officer, criminologist, or security specialist has to learn is that any sufficiently motivated offender is likely to succeed. That's hard to live with, and many of us in this field develop a sense of hyper-vigilance because we are alive to the darkest possibilities of human nature. We have to stop searching for answers that don't exist and give up the myth of a total security solution.
Crisis-oriented safety measures are comforting, but they will never completely succeed. If we ever perfected school campus security – we never will, but let's imagine – then the next perpetrators would find different methods. They might hijack a school bus, or develop a bomb, or, or, or....
So how do I find comfort? I look at the criminal-justice field as a whole and I am tremendously impressed with how far we have come in the last 40-odd years. Take a look at the homicide rate per 100,000 and tell me: Would you rather be raising a child now when the homicide rate is the lowest it's been in decades, or in 1980, before Columbine, when Atari ruled, Call of Duty hadn't even been imagined, Smurfs were Smurfing, and the murder rate was twice as high?
Many things have changed in the last four decades.
- All crimes have gone down. Way, way down. We don't have a very clear explanation for why, but we're grateful that the numbers are as good as they are.
- Lyndon B. Johnson's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration poured millions of dollars into crime research and criminal-justice education for professionals. The field is now better educated, more professional, and more science-based than it has ever been.
- Criminology as a social science has seen tremendous growth, with ever stricter standards of adherence to the scientific method and rigor in research.
- Advances in forensic technology including DNA, improved labs, and databases like ViCAP for violent offenses and AFIS for fingerprints have vastly improved our ability to find perpetrators and hold them accountable.
I know it seems like a terrifying time to raise a child in America. But if you can take a big step back, and grab hold of the long, long view, it's actually a very good time to be a parent in this country.
In the end, surveillance cameras and buzzers and locks and bars will never be as successful at protecting you as other human beings. Human beings who listen to those who are troubled, who provide support to those who need it, who reach out to the ostracized, and who lend a helping hand without being asked – those are the ones who truly prevent crime.
Be one of those human beings. Take a deep breath. Go to sleep at night accepting that targeted violence like the Sandy Hook shooting will never be completely eradicated. But know, also, that the chance that it could happen to you is incredibly slim, despite the hugeness of the fear that threatens to reign in your heart.
