James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson
James Quinn Wilsonwas an American academic, political scientist, and an authority on public administration. Most of his career was spent as a professor at UCLA and Harvard University. He was the chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute, member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the President's Council on Bioethics. He was Director of Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard-MIT...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth27 May 1931
CountryUnited States of America
The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise - and occasionally the application - of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, are entitled to fair treatment.
There aren't any liberals left in New York. They've all been mugged by now.
Many Americans have lost confidence in the way our criminal courts assess guilt and innocence. Whatever one thinks of the verdicts, the recent trials of O.J. Simpson, Erik and Lyle Menendez, and various defendants in preschool molestation cases have been lengthy, lawyer-dominated soap operas in which the search for truth has been subordinated to the manipulation of procedures.
What most needs explanation is not why some people are criminals, but why most people are not.
I believe that the high rates of property crime (and some of the increase in violent crime) are part of the price you pay for freedom
Character is not the enemy of self-expression and personal freedom, it is their necessary precondition.
I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care
Broken Window Theory: Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.
Community-based policing has now come to mean everything. It's a slogan. It has come to mean so many different things that people who endorse it, such as the Congress of the United States, do not know what they are talking about