James Q. Wilson wrote Thinking About Crime to help create a more realistic and effective way of dealing with crime. He argues that politicians do not have a clear picture of what causes crime or what will help society deal with it, and they do not follow through on their pledges in this area. Wilson himself, in his Introduction, argues that rehabilitation does not work, that social spending to stop crime has not worked well, and that punishment, deterrence and incapacitation do work and should be pursued.
Chapter 1 looks back at the special circumstances of the 1960s. Wilson makes a number of speculations about what "might have happened" if the 1960s had not been so hectic (drugs, war, the Great Society), but he concludes that the liberal attitudes of society and the media helped foster conditions leading to increases in crime. The efforts to reduce crime through social programs for the disadvantaged were not successful. Each time something was tried in the 1960s, the situation would become worse (as when unemployment increased while Great Society programs tried to fight it.
Chapter 2 considers further how crime increases in times of prosperity---as in the 1960s. One of the most harmful effects of crime is its destruction of a sense of community. Wilson argues that community is built on values, and crime destroys the sense of values. Social programs can help build communities by allowing people to move up the ladder socioeconomically. The increase in crime in the 1960s was in part due to the changing make-up of neighborhoods.
Chapter 3 examines various criminological theories, which Wilson believes are important, but not as important as seeing what works and what doesn't. What works, he says, are punishment, deterrence, and locking criminals up.
Chapter 4 looks at what can be done to improve the policing of crime. Wilson believes in experimenting to find out what works in policing and in every category of crime-fighting....