Karen Miner-Romanoff, dean of the College of Health and Public Administration at Franklin University, presented “A Discussion of Crime and Punishment in 21st Century America” at the Foreign Affairs Symposium’s (FAS) first “FAS: Unplugged” event on Tuesday at The Hopkins Club.
Unlike other FAS events, which are usually held in Shriver Hall, this event was designed to allow more interaction between the speaker and the audience.
“The aim of the FAS: Unplugged was that the speaker would have a shorter speaking time in order to have more time for Q&A,” junior Putt Rodchareon, one of the executive directors of FAS, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
“We hosted our event at the Hopkins Club because that allowed us to have people talk amongst each other before the event even happened,” Rodchareon wrote.
In her talk, Miner-Romanoff said that more change must be facilitated to reduce crime.
“Unfortunately, the notion is that we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress toward a more judicious America, but we have a long way to go,” Miner-Romanoff said.
She said that the United States has the largest prison population in the world.
“We have five percent of our population in America [in prisons], but 25 percent of the prison population throughout the world,” Miner-Romanoff said. “We could [improve] that by focusing on the real perpetrators — the dangerous crimes, including white-collar crime.”
White-collar crime, defined by the FBI as “synonymous with the full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals,” creates a large fiscal dent in the nation, costing the government $300-$600 billion a year. In contrast, street crime costs only about $17 billion a year.
“A lot of [incarceration policies are] based on myth and fear-based policies,” Miner-Romanoff said. “We need to move toward research and data-based policies to decrease crimes and make communities a lot safer. And we can do that.”
However, Romanoff said that the toughest barrier to installing smart policies on crime is fear.
She explained that this fear may be caused by violent portrayals of black people in the media.
“What you see in the media, and what you see in the news — you have learned to fear black people, and yet it’s the white-collar criminal that is far more damaging to our nation,” Miner-Romanoff said.
Many of the event’s attendees were receptive to Miner-Romanoff’s talk.
“It highlighted many points that people don’t necessarily think about,” Alexandra Kearson, a Hopkins alumna, said. “It all starts with acknowledging the problems.”
Kearson referenced the hurdles involved in solving these problems.
“I think where it gets to be slightly more difficult is in terms of solutions, and by the end, I was feeling like she could have done more emphasizing what actually can be done,” Kearson said. “I think it’s little steps. Sometimes you have to flip an entire society upside-down for it to change everything.”
Miner-Romanoff holds a Masters degree and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Ohio State University and from Walden University, respectively.
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