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Rising Crime and the Dismembered Family
How Conformist Intellectuals Have Campaigned Common Sense

By Norman Dennis
Feb. 1993
Institute of Economic Affairs
ISBN: 0-255-36350-8
93 p.
$16.95 Paper Original

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In Rising Crime and the Dismembered Family Norman Dennis develops further the argument first advanced in his and George Erdos' trailblazing study, Families Without Fatherhood. He calls attention to the role of a new class of 'conformist intellectuals' in undermining what common sense tells us about rising crime and family brokedown. Usually armed with a self-image of anti-establishmet radicalism, conformist intellectuals deny that the family is breaking down. It has, they say, only been changing. Nor, in the conformist's view, has there been a rise in crime, only an increase in 'moral panic'.

Norman Dennis demolishes these claims by carefully drawing attention to the facts, and he highlights a wider problem which has affected academic life on both sides of the Atlantic: that social affairs intellectuals are strongly inclined to subscribe to the politically correct doctrines of the day. The result is that universities, instead of being havens for conformists who are fearful of being labelled 'politically correct'.

Sociology
Series: Choice in Welfare Series