Learning to Live with Crime Learning to Live with Crime American Crime Narrative in the Neoconservative Turn Christopher P. Wilson T h e O h i O S T a T e U n i v e r S i T y P r e ss / C O l U m b us Copyright © 2010 by The Ohio State University. all rights reserved. library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilson, Christopher P. (Christopher Pierce), 1952– learning to live with crime : american crime narrative in the neoconservative turn / Christopher P. Wilson. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. iSBN 978-0-8142-1137-3 (cloth : alk. paper)—iSBN 978-0-8142-9236-5 (cd-rom) 1. True crime stories—United States—history and criticism. 2. Crime in literature. 3. Criminal investigation in literature. 4. Crime on television. i. Title. Pn56.C7W55 2010 810.9'3556—dc22 2010012826 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (iSBN 978-0-8142-1137-3) CD-rOm (iSBN 978-0-8142-9236-5) Cover design by laurence J. nozik Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in adobe Sabon Printed by Thomson-Shore, inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the american national Standard for information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed library materials. ANSi Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Getting Wise(guys): The Witness Protection narrative 21 Chapter 2 The box in the box: Putting interrogation in Prime Time 49 Chapter 3 The Time of the Crime: Cold Case Squads and Neoconservative Social memory 77 Chapter 4 Risk management: Frank abagnale Jr. and the Shadowing of Pleasure 98 Chapter 5 “Doing Time”: Keepers, brothers, and the Prison exposé 123 Epilogue Public Secrets 153 Notes 165 Index 195 Acknowledgments although book projects always have many origin points, the central argu- ments of this one first took shape in the classroom, in an interdisciplin- ary course entitled “Crime Stories” that i taught from the mid-1990s to 2007. my greatest debt is to the students who have enrolled in that course over the years. Their curiosity, enthusiasm, and insight have sustained and inspired me. Initial planning for that course, in fact, was supported by an internal teaching grant from my home institution, boston College. in the years that followed, i also received a boston College Faculty Fellowship (many thanks to Joe Quinn and mary Crane); support for an undergraduate research assistantship (undertaken by the endlessly capable nicole Wong); and then subvention going to press (thanks to vice Provost Kevin bedell and Dean David Quigley). at b.C., i have benefitted from the expertise and support of many colleagues. at the head of that list should go Jim Smith and Carlo rotella, who re-righted the ship on more than one occa- sion with their clarity, candor, and friendship. min Song read a draft of my introduction in the early going; i am repeatedly amazed by min’s seri- ousness and range. Paul lewis has brought his gifts of humor, emotional support, and intelligence to my cause so many times i have lost count. laura Tanner and James Krasner offered wonderful commentary on an earlier version of chapter 2; lad Tobin has continuously shared with me his love of literary nonfiction; nirmal Trivedi sustained my passion for this project by adding his own. Thanks also to the extraordinary assis- tance of the research staff of boston College’s library system, especially vii viii / Acknowledgments brendan rapple and anne Kenny. From other friends and colleagues, i have received support, both tangible and intangible, for which i am very grateful. Thanks to James bernauer, S.J., Patrick byrne, bob Chibka, Paul Doherty, rhonda Frederick, Candace hetzner, robin lydenberg, Kevin newmark, brendan rapple, Jamin rowan, robert Stanton, beth Wallace, Jim Wallace, matthew Watson, Judith Wilt, and Cynthia young. Topics in this book have also generated discussions, no less helpful to me, from afar. Sean mcCann first prompted me to think about the rela- tionship between crime and the state; lee bernstein weighed in, invaluably, on an early prospectus; Tom Ferraro shared his enthusiasm for direc- tions in my work that began, in part, by thinking about italian ameri- cans. i could also not have imagined more professional guidance than that which i received from the staff, and the anonymous outside readers, of The Ohio State University Press; thanks especially to maggie Diehl and Sandy Crooms. For scholarly assistance and general good will i must also thank Christine bold, Greg Conti, Peter Doyle, Sean Patrick Griffin, Gene newman, nicole rafter, Stuart Scheingold, Christophe den Tandt, and my dear Uncle George. like so many, i was saddened by the passing of emory elliott in the spring of 2009. emory became my faculty advisor during my senior year as an undergraduate; in those days, for the first of many times, i benefited from the example of his unpretentious wisdom and scholarship. every time i find myself climbing out on some unsupported limb, i see his eyes dancing. The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Presidential library and museum at the University of massachusetts-boston kindly allowed me access (reflected in chapter 1) to Joseph valachi’s manuscript and to correspondence in the library’s Peter maas Collection. i have presented portions of this book at several venues: thanks to the joint colloquium on irish and american Studies at b.C., particularly Kevin Kenny and (again) David Quigley; to the american Studies Summer institute at the University of massachu- setts-boston (thank you, Judy Smith and nina Tisch); and to the “Crime Cultures” Symposium hosted by the University of Portsmouth, in the UK. Thanks must go to bran nichol and his fellow organizers of that Sympo- sium, who offered comments on a version of chapter 4 that will appear in the volume Crime Cultures: Figuring Criminality in Literature and Film (london and new york: Continuum), edited by bran nicol, Patricia Pulham, and eugene mcnulty. The following publishers and institutions have also allowed me to reprint portions of Learning to Live with Crime from their journals: Springer, from “‘Where’s Whitey?’ ethnic Criminal- ity and the Problem of the informant,” Crime, Law, and Social Change Acknowledgments / ix (march 2005): 175–98; Duke University Press, from “Undercover: White ethnicity and Police exposé in the 1970s,” American Literature 77 (June 2005): 349–77; and the University of albany School of Criminal Justice, from “‘let’s Work out the Details:’ Putting interrogation in Prime Time,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 12 (Spring 2005): 47–64. Selections from “The Time of the Crime: Cold Case Squads and american Social memory,” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 28 (2004): 497–518, are reprinted with the permission of Cambridge Univer- sity Press. My wife Greer and my daughter Jesse have sustained this project in countless ways. They have also had the extra burden of learning to live with me. i hope they know they are the joys of life itself. Introduction much of our crime problem is rooted in the structure of american society and culture. however, knowing this does not provide much help in formulating a realistic crime policy. a democratic crime policy, relying as it does on the lawful use of force modified by discretion, can neither alter the social structure nor reform criminals. most of what it can do well is very traditional and unexciting. it can defend social tranquility and protect citizens by deterring crime, preventing crime, and apprehending offenders. it can restrain for some time offenders who are likely to repeat their transgressions. no doubt, when these functions are not performed well, our crime problem is much worse. but criminal activity is likely to remain relatively high in the United States in the foreseeable future, regardless of the wisdom of crime policy. —robert P. rhodes, The Insoluble Problems of Crime (1977) “There is no condition one adjusts to so quickly as a state of war.” —a character in alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002) I. This is an interdisciplinary study of the contemporary war on crime, and how that war has made its way into cultural representation and public consciousness. in particular, it is about the real-world tactics of this cam- paign—strategies that, surprisingly, have not often occupied much space in our cultural and literary criticism. Over the last three decades we’ve seen an explosion of critical interest in crime narratives of all kinds: superb examinations of sensational serial killer stories, of fictional Godfathers and real Sopranos watchers, of noir and neo-noir private detectives. and yet, despite these scholarly investigations, what is striking is how compara- tively infrequently critical attention has been paid to representations of the 1 2 / Introduction less sensational dimensions of the war on crime. With our eye on the fears and phantoms of our “culture of crime,” we pay relatively less attention to writing that wrestles with what is happening in our police interrogation rooms, our precinct houses, or even our prisons. This subject is, nevertheless, a battlefield with many fronts. For exam- ple, what happens when a journalist from New York magazine approaches the campaign against organized crime not through the romantic depiction of Godfathers but through a low-level, workaday mechanic who informs on his mob? Why is it that interrogation scenes became central to some prime-time police melodramas in the 1990s—and what role did everyday police practices have in shaping those scenes? What is behind the recent fascination with cold case homicides—murder cases reopened years and even decades after their occurrence—to the point that such cases populate everything from american prime time to elite magazines like The New Yorker? and more importantly, what do these different trends have in common, and what do they tell us about the larger contours of political authority and consent in our era? about how recent changes in criminal justice and law enforcement have affected core american ideas about citi- zenship, criminal accountability, and state authority? My approach to these questions is historical, and my governing argu- ment is easily stated.