Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmentClearly, a “get-tough” policy is not enough (Elikann, 1996):• Building more prisons has not worked. Incarceration acts like a quarantine,preventing a faster acceleration of crime, but fails to eradicatethe source of the crime epidemic.• The threat of punishment is not enough. Most violent crime is “animpulsive response to an immediate stressful situation,” often committedunder the influence of drugs or alcohol—not a rational, consideredaction (Petersila, 1993, p. 9).• Many experts feel that prisons train inmates to be better criminals(ibid., p. 10; Sampson & Laub, 1993). Most violent crime is committedby hard-core repeat offenders: the majority of prisoners commitnew crimes and are arrested within three years of release.• More police on the street does not lower crime. Published reportsindicate that increased police patrols in major U.S. cities have hadlittle effect on crime rates (The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment,1974; The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment, 1991; Wilson,1994). Washington, D.C., for example, has the highest police/populationratio in the nation—and one of the highest violent crime rates.Growing recognition of the need for prevention has led to experimentalapproaches such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE)and midnight basketball. Unfortunately, long-term scientific studieshave found no significant effects on crime and drug abuse from suchprograms (Wilson, 1994; Mendel, 1995).The Solution1. Reducing social stressThese “band-aid” approaches do not work because they fail to addressthe root cause of crime—the widespread violation of natural law andthe resulting epidemic of stress throughout society.Numerous studies have shown that social stress is a major contributingfactor to crime (Linsky & Straus, 1986; Brenner, 1976, 1980). TheState Stress Index of Linsky and Straus—an index of economic, family,and other stressors (including unemployment, bankruptcy, divorce,infant mortality, high-school dropout rate, and new welfare cases)—correlates very highly with rates of homicides, rapes, and aggravatedassaults (Linsky & Straus, 1986).200