HT: OrthodoxNet.com
Chuck Colson
5/27/2010 – Chuck Colson –
The evidence shows over and over that crime is not caused by deprivation, but by depravity. And the answer is conversion.
The statistics are startling. Across the United States, crime rates are dropping—for the third year in a row. According to the FBI, violent crimes like murder and rape were down 5.5% in 2009. Property crimes were down 4.9%. Amazingly enough, crime rates dropped more in big cities than in smaller cities.
The media is having a hard time explaining why crime rates are dropping. As one major paper put it, the drop in crime is “challenging the widely held belief that recessions drive up crime rates.” But “challenging” puts it too mildly: Since the economic collapse, the rate of decline in crime rates has actually accelerated!
So where does the “widely held” belief that recessions fuel crime come from? Well, as I wrote years ago, society is now reaping the bitter fruits of the misguided theories about crime that began in the 1930s, when Professor Edwin Sutherland of Indiana University argued that crime was the result of sociological factors. A generation of liberals in academia and government accepted the view that if only the evils of society—such as poverty, unemployment, and racism—were overcome, crime would disappear.
Indeed, Attorney General, Ramsey Clark wrote in the 1960s: “The crowding of millions of poor people with their cumulative disadvantage into the urban ghettos of our affluent . . . society not only offers the easy chance for criminal acts—it causes crime.”
But facts are very stubborn things. If poverty causes crime, then crime wouldn’t have decreased during the Great Depression, or risen during the affluent 1960s. And it wouldn’t be dropping now.
Could it be, that instead, during tough economic times, families and neighbors band together, thus inhibiting crime, as James Q. Wilson has written? Or, as my former colleague Michael Gerson has written, that people turn away from materialism and cultivate thrift, prudence, and self-denial?
No, the cause of crime is not poverty. It is caused by individuals making wrong moral choices. Psychiatrist Stanton Samenow and Psychologist Samuel Yochelson were, as Samenow recently told me, “converted” to this point of view back in the 1970s. After 17 years of studying prisoners, they found that what habitual criminals had in common wasn’t their economic background or a history of abuse. It was that they chose to break the law.
So the really big question is why does the liberal establishment—politicians, sociologists, media elites—still cling to the myth that poverty causes crime? The answer is simple. If they abandon their theory, they would come perilously close to agreeing that the biblical worldview is true: that individuals, made in the image of God, are moral agents responsible for their own behavior.
This affords us Christians a rare apologetic opportunity. Today, tomorrow, or the next day, use this conversation starter with a secular friend: “I wonder why crime is declining in bad economic times.” When they can’t answer that, and trust me, they won’t be able to, give them a simple little explanation:
The evidence shows over and over that crime is not caused by deprivation, but by depravity. And the answer is conversion.
Here is another opportunity to show your nonbelieving friends that Christianity, as I have frequently argued, is the only rational explanation of reality.
Poverty may not be the only cause of crime, but it sure contributes to it. Consider, for example, all the povery-stricken ethnic groups that have arrived on American shores over the past 200 years. Virtually all of them produced a gangster element, practitioners of organized crime, which, after reaching a certain peak, waned as each group as a whole became more affluent. The Irish gansters, for example, were replaced by Italians, who are now being replaced by Russians and and career criminals of various Asian ethnicities.
And since when do we Orthodox believe in “depravity” anyway? That is a western, Augustinian concept, one that Orthodoxy rejects. Given that, why is an Orthodox website running an article by Chuck Colson?
FrGregACCA, the article is being run because, like it or not, we don’t live in either a vacume or a predominantly Orthodox culture. We live, even in our largely secular age, in a culture whose ears are tuned to Protestant theological language. We need to be aware what Protesants are saying and how they talk and how to communicate with them. Any self-respecting Orthodox believer can translate if their priest has taught them.
My question to you, is crime really a Gordian Knot of such multi-layered causation that we have to apply a far reaching anaylsis which in turn requires all sorts of governmental and non-governmental programs to ‘solve’ or does it still come down to the personal moral choice regardless of the situtation in which one finds oneself. See Joseph and the steward’s wife.
There is a common meaning of the word depravity as well.
You ought to listen to the song “Officer Krumpke” from West Side Story which gives an amusing overview of the various approaches to crime that has only been added to since the song was written
True, the 1960′s we had the oldest members of the babyboomers in their teens and 20′s and had a large youth population. Today, we have aged which means tha crime is lower among people middle age. Colson stated before in some book of his that crime was low during the 1930′s compared to the 1960′s maybe also a depressed economy where most of the population is above substance will deter crime. Granted, I know that there were people in the 1930′s near substance more than now but it still was not like medevial cities which had high crime since policing was almost non-existance, that why in the middle ages the term highway robbery was invented.
I was with the understanding that we do not accept complete or total depravity, but do not deny certain levels of it? Brokeness of the mind, fragmented from the heart (nous) none of which may be directly correlated to poverty. But I could be wrong and often am …
I think he is running it because we are not dealing with theology only but also what causes crime. And one can be wrong on theology but right on other issues. I also read protestants and catholics on morally, they can wrong on sin but right about certan reasons why people act the way they do. And yes, immirgant groups have a history of gangs. Age is a more bigger factor, most crimes are committed prior to age 40. Medieval poverty as I mention is much worst than modern poverty but medieval society had a almost non-existent police force. The first police force in the modern sense was developed in England in the 19th century, and crime over the decades during the 19th in Europe and the US dropped a lot.
I understand what y’all are saying about getting input from non-Orthodox on non-theological issues. However, Mr. Colson is making a theological statement when he attributes crime to “depravity”, one that is not in line with Orthodoxy as a whole.
Obviously, from an Orthodox perspective, we have inherited a corrupted human nature and death as a result of the Fall, but “depravity” implies the Augustinian/Calvinist notion of “original guilt”, the notion that not only do we suffer the consequences of the fall (consequences which, in fact, incline us toward sin), but that we are also “guilty” of the fall ourselves: “In Adam’s fall sinned we all.” As we know, Orthodoxy rejects the latter completely.
Personally, I think that both bad choices AND deprivation (as well as a host of other negative socioeconomic factors) contribute to crime. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us, insofar as it is possible, to take responsibility for ourselves and to call upon others to do the same while at the same time doing all we can, both personally and politically, to alleviate the socioeconomic problems in question.
FrGregACCA,
If I may, I think Chrys and Fr Hans are correct–you are reading your own theological concerns into Colson’s essay. His only point is that crime is the fruit of sin. I would disagree with you that deprivation plays a role in crime, it doesn’t. In the final analysis the VAST majority of people in even the most extreme poverty DO NOT engage in criminal acts.
While I think it is praiseworthy to ease human suffering, we ought not to fool ourselves into thinking that this will lower the crime rate. It may but if I’ve understood Colson properly, his argument is that economic depression, and so a higher rate of poverty, does not result in an increase in crime. In fact he’s arguing the opposite, that crime rates seem to go down in times of relative economic hardship and up in times of relative prosperity.
Finally, and forgive me for pointing this out, but your community, the Antiochian Catholic Church in America, is not part of the Orthodox Church and I think it is inappropriate for you to present yourself as an Orthodox Christian priest. I welcome your contributions but please do not misrepresent your relationship to the Orthodox Church.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
As a point of clarification, depravity is not inherently Augustinian/Calvinist any more than “sin” is. The actual concept of “Total Depravity” (one of Calvinism’s five points) is, but that just isn’t in the article. In fact, that would contradict and undermine the whole purpose of the article – which is a call to conversion . . . which is kind of hard to disagree with.
Mr. Colson’s argument is to focus on the necessity of taking responsibility by looking at a variety of data that challenge the raft of prevailing notions that are invariably used to allay responsibility. (Not surprisingly that same shift away from individual responsibility is often promoted by that part of the spectrum that also seeks to avoid sexual responsibility as well.) It is interesting to note that an addict – of any kind – invariably blames his circumstances. By making the external (others, circumstances, etc.) responsible for him, he not only abdicates the responsibility he does have, but can (or rather will) then readily use it to justify every manner of indulgence. Recovery (and conversion, as well) begins with rejecting that dodge for the self-serving and self-defeating trap that it is and recognizing his very real responsibility for his circumstances – often at a point where the addiction has created some very adverse circumstances indeed.
Do we still need to foster more supportive, positive or helpful circumstances? Always. But making others responsible for one’s own behavior is rightly described as “crazy making.” This same deformative tendency can also also be found among the entitled (whether rich or poor or adolescent), often with the same destructive consequences. By contrast, the saint often takes on responsibility for things which are beyond his direct control, such as the sins of others.
It is easy to get lost – as many do – in the various influences that affect us. Though we may be able to actually control very little in life, we invariably destroy ourselves when we refuse to exercise the full measure of the responsibility we do have.
Well said Chris. You response must have popped up as I was crafting mine.
Don’t read too much theology into the the piece. It’s a social/political essay. The only point Colson is making is that the idea that crime is solely a function of poverty is not true. He wants to recover the notion of moral agency and thus personal responsibility for private choices, of which the choice to commit criminal actions is one. He argues that the presuppositions guiding the research he cites blinds us to this moral dimension.
You can argue whether Colson’s use of the term “depravity” means the Calvinist definition or something else. Colson never says. His point is that religion and public life are inseparable — a point the Orthodox would have no trouble making. That is as far as he goes with it.
If I may, regardless of whether we agree with Colson’s anthropology, the fact remains that he has done remarkable good going to “the least of men.” What’s shocking to me, is that in a spirited exchange I had recently with a GOA priest, the topic of the Manhattan Declaration was brought up. This priest said that he had “seen the stats” regarding Colson’s ministry and that he “wasn’t too impressed.” This was a most unfortunate statement in my opinion. When SCOBA/EA starts sending bishops into prisons to minister to the needs of the worst of the worst, then we can take a hard look at Colson’s legacy. Until then, I rather think not.
By all accounts, he has lived according to his convictions and eschewed the kind of marketing that is common enough for someone like him in Evangelical circles.
As for stats – I wonder what kind of stats Elder Paisios had? I could only wish that the Church – and I – could claim some semblance to such saints. The stats that matter are the stats that “stick.”
Actually, you priest friend is mistaken. The “stats” are better than any other kind of rehabilitation program. It’s tough work. They were certainly good enough that the Russian Orthodox Church asked Prison Fellowship to teach them how to do prison ministry after communism fell.
That’s true, Mr Colson doesn’t try to change the christianity of a country to southern bapists which is the protestant demonation he belongs too, in Orthodox countries he lets Orthodox run the prison fellowship and in Roman Catholic countries Roman Catholic. The exceptions would be the fringes of christianity like the Mormons and Jehovah Witness.