PSU Magazine Summer 1988

My object all sublime I shall achieve in time to make... The punishment fit the crime - WS. Gilbert) "The Mikado)) I Article by David Richie t's easy to be confused about the issues of crime. With every political speech and every newspaper ed itorial comes a new solution, and the solutions seem as numerous as the crimes themselves. Longer jail terms. Rehabilitation. Capital punishment. More prison cells. Better police pro– tection. "Jobs, Not Jails." The consensus is there is no con– sensus. Crime is an urgent, emo– tionally charged issue that defies easy answers. Fuel for the debate is never end– ing. Suggesting the crime rate has been " flat " since 1970 while the prison populat ion doubled, a May Oregonian article argued that America was locking too many people up and that this was enormously expensive. Still others would suggest that while we are putting large numbers of criminals in prison, we're failin g to keep them there long enough. The fact that the crime rate has fallen slightly over the years is of lit– tle comfort to Multnomah County District Attorney Michael D. Schrunk (a '64 graduate of PSU), who was quoted as saying " It's like last year I was drowning in 10 feet of water," he said, "and this year I am drowning in 9 feet of water. It 's still too hi gh. And it's a crisis. It's going the right way, but it's still Portland Police Photographs by Mike McCluhan m 4