Noam Chomsky on Crime

Political Activist

Capital punishment is a crime

Q: What are your views on capital punishment?

A: It’s a crime. I agree with Amnesty International on that one, and indeed with most of the world. The state should have no right to take people’s lives.

Source: Secrets, Lies, and Democracy, by Noam Chomsky, p. 34 May 2, 1994

Harsher penalties only serve to control the poor more

A constructive approach to the problem [of increasing crime] would require dealing with its fundamental causes, but that’s off the agenda, because we must continue with a social policy that’s aimed at strengthening the welfare state for the rich. The only kind of responses the government can resort to under those conditions is pandering to the fear of crime with increasing harshness, attacking civil liberties and attempting to control the poor, essentially by force. [Clinton’s crime bill] greatly increased, by a factor of 5 or 6, federal spending for repression. There’s nothing constructive in it. There are more prisons, more police, heavier sentences, more death sentences, new crimes, three strikes and you’re out. It’s unclear how much pressure and social decline and deterioration people will accept. One tactic is just drive them into urban slums-concentration camps, in effect-and let them prey on one another. Source: Secrets, Lies, and Democracy, by Noam Chomsky, p. 32-34 May 2, 1994

Societal inequality causes crime

Until you ask why there’s an increase in social disintegration, and why more and more resources are being directed toward the wealthy and privileged sectors and away from the general population, you can’t have a concept of why there’s rising crime or how you should deal with it. Over the past 20 or 30 years, there’s been a considerable increase in inequality. This trend accelerated during the Reagan years. The society has been moving visibly toward a kind of Third World model.

The result is an increasing crime rate, as well as other signs of social disintegration. Most of the crime is poor people attacking each other, but it spills over to more privileged sectors. People are very worried-and quite properly, because the society is becoming very dangerous. A constructive approach to the problem would require dealing with its fundamental causes, but that’s off the agenda, because we must continue with a social policy that’s aimed at strengthening the welfare state for the rich.

Source: Secrets, Lies, and Democracy, by Noam Chomsky, p. 32 May 2, 1994

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