Introduction
It would be a tedious job to estimate exactly what proportion of the news that is published, broadcast, and televised every day is concerned with crime, but the percentage is obviously large. A brutal murder can shove even a war out of the front-page headlines, and hundreds of thousands of readers will pore avidly over the details of a local shoplifting. Citizens who are totally uninterested in politics as such will discuss endlessly the causes of crime and the proper treatment of criminals.
Even with this abundance of information and theorizing, few people can qualify as genuine experts on the subject. One man who does, however, is Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States and son of the retired Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark. Interviewed recently by Today's Health, the magazine of the American Medical Association, Clark had many relevant and perceptive things to say about crime and criminals.
"Crime," said Clark, "reflects the character of our society and therefore it's not an issue that should be treated lightly or cheaply. It's a very profound problem, affecting and infecting everyone, and to deal with it in political terms is unfortunate.
"By that I mean we must recognize that you cannot beat crime out of society any more than you can beat heroin out of the bloodstream of an addict. And that, on the other hand, we must believe there's nothing weak about quietness.
"We cannot solve the crime problems by force, harshness and violence.
"We need the strength of commitment to the eradication of the underlying causes, tempered by tolerance and gentleness.
"The most beautiful expression of those combined qualities was in Carl Sandberg's description of Abraham Lincoln.
"Sandberg said, 'Not often in history does there come a man who is both steel and velvet, hard as rock and soft as drifting fog. Who has within his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect!'
"I believe that's it. We need to be both very gentle and very strong. To deny our gentleness at this time in our history would be too much for people."
Asked to be more specific about the causes of crime and possible effective means for dealing with them, Clark went on:
"There are two things about our crime control efforts that are clean. First, we are trying to tell ourselves that crime can be solved with police, courts and prisons. Second, we tell ourselves that we have failed to support the very efforts needed for those agencies to perform well. And we're wrong both times.
"If there's a single factor that is the greatest contributor to anti-social conduct, it is poverty that results in poor health.
"From my reading and personal contacts, I would estimate that 50 percent of the prison population is alcoholic. That's a socio-medical problem. In some cities better than half of reported property crimes are related to drug addiction - another complex socio-medical problem. Mental retardation is another example. Perhaps one in five of all in prison are mentally retarded. Prisons cannot cope with that. Most crime is committed by the poor against the poor, and these are the same people who suffer most from addiction, alcoholism, mental illness and retardation.
"Now our police, courts and prisons can't solve health and social problems, so obviously criminal justice is not the whole answer."
The Wicked and the Whipped by Amy Gray is a novel about crime-many kinds of crime. You will meet many characters in this richly complex story, and you may begin to wonder before you have finished it is any of these people completely innocent. In the beginning, it's true, Lucille Bryson and her husband, the Reverend Doctor Paul Bryson, seem to be about as free from the taint of sin as any human beings living in today's guilt-riddled world can possibly be. In fact, they seem almost too good to be true. Then, gradually, you will see that the pain and frustration they cause each other and members of Paul's congregation to suffer are in fact crimes of the worst sort-crimes that are committed in the name and under the guise of good rather than evil. Lucille is a dutiful wife who fails to realize her own attractiveness and potential for sexuality-and her failure is a well-nigh fatal flaw.
This, of course, is a kind of negative evil, and there is positive evil in the novel as well. Most of this stems from the person of Wade Sampson, a man sworn to uphold the law, but a man who is inherently savage, brutal and greedy. Lucille first incurs his wrath almost by accident, but he becomes determined to wreak vengeance upon her, and that vengeance alters the courses of many lives.
Amy Gray is a new writer, but in The Wicked and the Whipped she has written one of the most aptly titled novels of all time, and one that probes to the very heart of human passions, ambitions, wants and needs. It is a story that will remind you inevitably of today's crime headlines, and that hopefully will make you better able to understand them.
The Publishers