Crime & Law Enforcement

Roger Connor is founder and Executive Director of the American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities (AARR), a legal organization aimed at making individuals more responsible for their communities. Connor and the AARR have been active in helping communities enact anti-panhandling laws. His group recently drafted a law making it illegal for panhandlers to step in someone's path, or to panhandle in subway stations or at ATM machines.

Maria Foscarinis is founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Foscarinis has been active in legal issues affecting the homeless since 1983. In 1985, she established the office of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. She calls anti-panhandling laws inhumane and possibly unconstitutional, and works to prevent cities from passing laws which attempt to sweep people off the streets. She has litigated several federal laws which enforce the individual rights of homeless people.

New York City transit police officer Brendan McGarry. He's been at the job for 21 years. McGarry wrote (also in a recent New York Times article, 10 Apr 94) about the homeless and the panhandlers on the subways, "for a transit cop, they are a tough, unpleasant, sometimes dangerous part of a sometimes thankless job." McGarry complains the public misunderstands them and accuses them of mistreatment. But he says they've worked hard at finding shelter and services for the subway's homeless, setting up a homeless outreach unit.

Mary Previte, superintendent of the Camden County (NJ) Youth Center. Previte, the great granddaughter of missionary pioneer Hudson Taylor, grew up in China with her missionary parents. During World War II, she and her fellow students and teachers spent three years in a Japanese concentration camp. Previte credits the structure her teachers' created with making the horrific experience bearable. For the past twenty years, Previte has run the youth center, a holding center for boys and girls charged with serious crimes.

Writer Mikal Gilmore, youngest brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore's 1977 death --at his own request-- by firing squad in Utah, was the first American execution in ten years. Brother Mikal finds seeds of his brother's two murders sown far back in Gilmore family history, and its Mormon roots.

Journalist and author Lawrence Wright. Wright's latest book is "Remembering Satan: A Case of Recovered Memory and the Shattering of an American Family" (Knopf) Wright explores the nature of memory and the notions of recovered memory and repression. "Remembering Satan" is the story of Paul Ingram and his family. Ingram was a Washington state deputy sheriff. His two grown daughters accused him of sexually abusing them. They said that Ingram and other members of the sheriff's department had committed Satanic ritual atrocities.

Lionel Dahmer is the father of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who committed some of the most ghastly crimes imaginable. Lionel has written a new memoir about his life with his son, "A Father's Story." (William Morrow), in which he tries to understand what happened to his son, and how he could turn into such a monster.

Journalist Erik Larson of the Wall Street Journal. Larson has been on the show before to talk about polling, privacy and direct marketing and about how a gun goes from the manufacturer to the hands of a teenager. In fact he's written a new book, "Lethal Passage: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America's Gun Crisis," (Crown Publishers). Today Terry will talk again with Larson about guns, about gun control laws, the NRA, etc. Larson is also the author of "The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities."

Terry talks with a young man who has been through the program at the Camden County Youth Center, a juvenile detention center in Camden, New Jersey: Derrek Penny.

Terry talks with two young men who've been through the program at the Camden County Youth Center, a juvenile detention center in Camden, New Jersey: Eddie Budah and Derrek Penny. Budah will read some of his poetry that has appeared in the Center's newsletter, "What's Happening."