Everyone is afraid. Voters are afraid of getting mugged and politicians are afraid of losing their jobs. Now that the gunfire and drug dealing have spilled out into the middle class suburbia, politicians have realized that they have to look like they are doing something about crime, even if they are not actually taking steps to reduce crime.

During the recent Senate debate on the anti-crime bill, for example, it became clear that Congress was driven as much by politics as much as the desire to craft useful laws. The Democrats, led by Joe Biden of Delaware, were so concerned about being accused of being too soft on crime that they added to the bill more than 50 new federal death penalty crimes, including capital punishment for major drug dealers even if the dealers are not directly connected to a specific death.

This was pure politics at its worst. Every lawyer knows that the federal government rarely, if ever, prosecutes defendants for capital crimes, since state and local prosecutors typically handle murder cases. Since these new death penalty provisions won’t be used by anyone, it’s clear that they were put there for voters, not for prosecutors.

The Republicans, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, were even worse. They branded as "pork" any money that was not set aside for building new prisons or hiring new police officers. So effective programs like drug treatment, aid to domestic violence victims and "midnight" basketball were all labeled "social programs" wasting precious tax dollars, rather than proven preventive measures that save tax dollars by helping kids find alternatives to crime.

And despite the bill’s increase of the already stiff mandatory prison sentences, Hatch and other Republicans criticized the entire package as showing that the Democrats were "soft on crime."

Despite Hatch’s ravings, all but two Senate Republicans had voted for a similar bill in November and praised the bill for its toughness. Why the sudden change of heart? By stalling the crime bill, the Republicans may have derailed health care reform legislation, thus hurting Congressional Democrats in upcoming elections and painting President Clinton as ineffective. In short, the Republicans seemed more interested in fighting the Democrats than fighting crime.

It’s not just enough to talk tough about crime, we have to be smart and honest about crime, too. While the death penalty may be appropriate in certain cases of premeditated murder, it does not reduce crime. In fact, the states (and nations) with the highest execution rates also have some of the highest crime rates. The only way to reduce violent crime is to prevent crime, primarily by reaching kids before then become criminals. That involves lots of "pork" to ensure that at-risk youth get early help.

We also should recognize that banning assault weapons alone will not bring an end to the senseless shootings that occur every day. Not only should we continue to move toward banning all firearms that are not used for hunting (including all semiautomatic handguns), but we have to step up our efforts to collect and destroy guns that are already privately owned.

Longer sentences without parole and "three strikes and you’re out" laws may sound good during the campaign season, but they could also be a one-way ticket to bankruptcy. Since, as Jesse Jackson pointed out, it costs more to send a kid to jail than to Yale, we should be looking for ways to siphon off non-violent, first-time offenders.

Finally, while it makes sense to hire more police officers, we have to be very careful about how we hire and train new cops. Most of the police officers I prosecuted were hired in 1990, the year when the Metropolitan Police Department relaxed its entry standards and cut its training program for new recruits. The result was an unusually high number of bad apples.

Congress has taken a step in the right direction. In Maryland alone, the anti-crime bill could mean money for an estimated 2,000 additional police officers, approximately $100 million for prison construction, about $9.8 million in block grants for after-school programs for children, $21 million in aid for domestic violence victims, and drug treatment for an estimated 5,900 prisoners. Just imagine what politicians could accomplish without all the politics.

Glenn Ivey served for four years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington. He is an occasional contributor to this page.