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James Q. Wilson

James Q. Wilson Books

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The Moral Sense

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“[in 1998] I know my political ideas affect what I write but I've tried to follow the facts wherever they land. Every topic I've written about begins as a question. How do police departments behave? Why do bureaucracies function the way they do? What moral intuitions do people have? How do courts make their decisions? What do blacks want from the political system? I can honestly say I didn't know the answers to those questions when I began looking into them.”

PeopleKnowsWayWantWritingI CanIdeasFactsPoliticalDecisionAnswersMoralWrittenLandFunctionPoliceCourtIntuitionHonestlyBehaveDepartmentTopicsBureaucracyPolitical SystemsPolice Department
Author:James Q. Wilson
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“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.”

ThinkingWayHas BeensLostCasesCourtGuiltVariousCriminalsLawyerTrialsInnocenceManipulationOperaSoapProceduresVerdictSearch For TruthSoap OperasLengthyPreschoolMolestationLost Confidence
Author:James Q. Wilson
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“Police ought to protect communities as well as individuals.... Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police - and the rest of us - ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows.”

WellsIndividualCommunityBrokenOughtProtectWindowImportancePoliceIllnessPhysiciansMaintainingFosteringBroken Windows
Book:On Character: Essays
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“The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsHumansHas BeensImportantHardTermViewsImpossibleConditionsPolicyConservativeCampaignsPresidentialLatterHuman ConditionJohnsonSkepticPublic PolicyPresidential CampaignJohn Kennedy
Author:James Q. Wilson
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“The selection process has been powerful enough to produce one indisputable outcome: the family is a universal human institution. . . . In virtually every society into which historians or anthropologists have inquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children. . . . Even in societies where men and women have relatively unrestricted sexual access to one another beginning at an early age, marriage is still the basis for family formation. It is desired by the partners and expected by society.”

PeopleMenHumansChildrenHas BeensStillsEnoughAgeTogetherProcessPowerfulResponsibilityFamilyProduceMen And WomenUniversalBasesInstitutionsExpectedAccessPartnersTiesOutcomesHistorianSelectionRaising ChildrenFormationKinshipLiving TogetherAnthropologists
Author:James Q. Wilson
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“Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers.”

IfsProblemGovernmentPoliticalPowerfulExerciseDifficultySeparationAriseFeaturesAgencyEfficientArrangementsFederal GovernmentPolitical SystemsTolerableFragmentedSeparation Of PowersGovernment Agencies
Author:James Q. Wilson
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“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.”

PeopleIfsMayLightBreakFireCarBuildingTheoryBrokenWindowLeavingTendenciesRestaurantsBagsTrashSidewalkVandalsFire InsideSquattersBroken Windows
Author:James Q. Wilson
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“During the 1960s, one neighborhood in San Francisco had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with incomes under four thousand dollars a year, the least educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate, and the highest proportion of substandard housing ... That neighborhood was called Chinatown. Yet, in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.”

YearsPersonsStatesFiveFourThousandHighestDollarsPrisonRateCommittedEducationalIncomeChineseCaliforniaProportionNeighborhoodUnemploymentLowestHousingSan Francisco1960sAttainmentAncestryTuberculosisUnemployment RateChinatown
Author:James Q. Wilson
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