When Richard Nixon swept into office in 1968, the United States was on fire in the literal sense of the word.  Fractured by the ongoing disaster in Vietnam, the nation was closer to civil war than it had been for a century, and when Martin Luther King was cut down in Memphis that spring, over a hundred^ cities from coast to coast exploded in flames. Within the Halls of Ivy, the flag itself was being torched, and the stunned middle class watched in dismay as their kids burned draft cards, ripped off their bras, grew hair, smoked dope, and joined the Panthers on the barricades.  In living rooms across the country the air fairly crackled with fear and rage, and that fall Richard Nixon promised to set it right. 

But after demolishing the Democrats as soft on crime, Nixon was faced with an unpleasant reality.  It began to dawn on his advisors that there’s really not much the White House could do that directly impacts the crime rate. The thugs people are really afraid of—burglars, robbers, murderers—are not normally