How Far Down Do You Define Deviancy in Ferguson?

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s celebrated phrase “defining deviancy down” first appeared in a 1993 essay in The American Scholar. “I proffer the thesis,” wrote Moynihan, “that, over the past generation…the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can ‘afford to recognize’ and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized.”

... The solution is stricter rather than looser enforcement of the laws. The borderline between individual criminal behavior and civil insurrection has become fuzzy. If American prisons become too full or too costly, outsource the incarceration of criminals to less expensive venues, as Prof. Reuven Brenner of McGill University proposed some years ago. Out of Moynihan’s and other’s work came “broken windows policing.” The number of violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants fell from 747 when Moynihan’s article appeared in 1993 to 387 in 2012. If we abandon the rule of law we abandon America.

Read full article: PJ Media, November 26, 2014