CRIME IN THE CAPITAL

DECLARING that "responsibility begins at home," Richard Nixon last week announced a long-overdue series of measures to curb the rapidly growing crime rate in the District of Columbia. In effect, the President's plans are a pilot program for his Administration's promised attack on the nationwide crisis of violence in the streets.

Restrained in tone, precise in language, the Nixon statement contained no mention of the law-and-order campaign slogan. "These troubles have been long building," Nixon said. In part, he blamed them on failures in education, racial prejudice and the explosive pressures of rapid social adjustments, adding: "I wish I could report that we had produced a magic formula that would end crime and sweep away despair overnight. We have not."

Drastic Reorganization. Nixon's anticrime package, culled from previous studies, drew attention to vital but neglected court and rehabilitation procedures. It called for drastic reorganization of the District of Columbia judicial system by providing a single municipal court to handle all normal litigation and criminal prosecution. This would help eliminate lengthy delays in felony cases that have hitherto been tried in federal court. The President wants ten more judges to be added and 40 assistant U.S. attorneys to press prosecution of the immense backlog of cases. To strengthen the public-defender program and provide for rehabilitation of criminals, Nixon will budget $700,000. He also recommended that the district hire 1,000 more police. "Increasing numbers of crimes," said Nixon, "are being committed by persons already indicted for earlier crimes, but free on pretrial release. Many are now being arrested two, three, even seven times for new offenses while awaiting trial." He called for pretrial detention of recidivists whose release presents "a clear danger to the community."

To implement this, Congress would have to change the 1966 Bail Reform Act. The act's broad wording has resulted in serious abuses. Most of the time, only capital offenders are detained, while in Washington and elsewhere rapists, armed robbers and other violent types drift back into the streets. Many cannot be found for trial.

Nixon, by attempting to give judges more discretion as to whom they should allow to go free on bail, may be running afoul of the Constitution. Excessive bail or its denial, except for the most serious crimes, is of course contrary to the fundamentals of Anglo-American law. Thus constitutional experts do not believe that the Supreme Court would permit preventive detention. Says Harvard Professor Robert McCloskey: "An educated guess is that the court would consider this a step backward, and the mood of the court is not to tolerate steps backward."

From Blocks Away. Even as the President's message was made public, Washington's rising crime wave was being dramatized only four blocks from the White House, where a bank was held up --Washington's 621st armed robbery during January, twice the 1968 rate.

In his message, the President emphasized the need for early rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents, before they become habitual lawbreakers. His concern was understandable. Nixon had received a progress report from the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which ranks the U.S. high among the Western democracies in the incidence of violence, whether the category is crime or civil strife. In both, but particularly in crime, the report identified the principal culprit: the young.

While always a major factor, today, the report noted, "our young account for a greater proportion of crime than the increase in their numbers alone can explain." Since 1960, the population of juveniles has risen 22%; meanwhile, their arrest rate for violent offenses has doubled. Despite its findings, the commission drew fatuous hope from a familiar statistic: "Despite the recent trends, 99% of the population do not engage in crimes of violence."

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