t the affluent or impoverished end of the spectrum, individuals and groups within the scope of these theories have been traditionally meant to define themselves in society mainly by reason of their connection to social structures and institutions. The point is that in Western conceptions of civil communities, the individual's social role is inevitably defined as a greater or lesser claim on the benefits, resources, and protections of public institutions and greater or lesser need to compete for those benefits, resources, and protection. But in recent years, such assumptions about the structure of civil society have been called into question. Lasch says that that civil society as conceived by traditional political liberalism, based on [Locke's] vision of individual reason aggregated as rational community, has declined "in a world in which there are no values except those of the market" (Lasch, 1995, p. 60). To counter unstoppable market values, liberals "turned to the state." But as state programs failed, owing partly to market forces, so did confidence in the state, and by extension, in the integrity of civil society.
Etzioni cites such challenges to traditional conceptions of civil society as the "cult" of criminal rights following the Miranda decision, or alternatively, what some would call reactionary attempts to abolish Miranda and constitutional guarantees for the accused altogether (1995, p. 4). For its part, the justice system seems powerless to attack the crime problem. Popular-press reports suggest that younger criminals, many of them gang members, have an attitude of contempt for the society in general. In Washington, D.C., "more than 1,500 individuals serving time for anything from murders to misdemeanors have strolled out of halfway houses since January 1 [1993]. About 500 of them are still at large" (Lardner, 1993, p. 6). One jailed black youth told The Washington Post that getting involved in crime means "trying to get ...