Nowadays, something has gone terribly wrong with our once-proud American way of life. It has happened in the area of 62 A key ingredient is being 63 , and I think I know what it is: accountability. Accountability isn’t hard to 64 . It means that every person is responsible 65 his or her actions and 66 for their consequences. Of the many values that hold civilization 67 —honesty, kindness, generosity, decency— accountability may be the most important of all, 68 it, there can be no respect, no trust, no law— and 69 , no society. My job 70 a police officer is to impose accountability 71 people who refuse, or have never learned. But as every cop knows, external controls on people’s 72 are far less effective than 73 restrains such as guilt, shame and embarrassment. Yet more and more, especially in our large cities and suburbs, these inner restraints are 74 . The main cause of this breakdown is a radical 75 in attitudes. Thirty years ago, if a crime was 76 , society was considered victimized. Now, in a shocking reversal, it’s the criminal who is considered victimized: by his underprivileged upbringing, by the school that didn’t teach him to read, by the church failed to reach him with moral 77 , by the parents who didn’t provide a 78 home. I don’t believe it. Many others in equally disadvantaged circumstance choose not to engage 79 criminal activities. If we exempt the criminal even partly, 80 accountability, we become a society of endless excuses where no one accepts responsibility for anything. We 81 need more and more people who believe that the person who commits a crime is the one responsible for it.