Backfire on Crime

During his last presidential campaign, Richard Nixon denounced "the wave of crime" that he said was sweeping the country. What was needed, he said, was "leadership that will place this problem as the first priority of American business." The Republican nominee characterized Attorney General Ramsey Clark as "soft on crime" and a "coddler of criminals." A new man at the Department of Justice, Nixon proclaimed, was needed "if we are to restore order and respect for law in this country." Republicans everywhere blamed the permissiveness of Democratic Administrations for rising crime rates.

That was 1968. Now, three years later, Nixon's unblushing rhetoric may well be returning to haunt him. Under his Administration, crime has continued to mount. In 1969 the total of reported crimes increased 12% over the previous year, while the four categories of violent crime--murder, rape, robbery, assault--jumped 11%. In 1970 total crime rose another 11%; violent crime increased 12%. Clark's successor, Attorney General John Mitchell, has released the FBI statistics for the first half of this year. The figures were no more encouraging: total crime up 7% compared to the same period last year, violent crime up 11%.

With some rather dubious statistical footwork, Mitchell sidestepped the most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the report--that performance has not matched promise. "The continuing upward trend illustrates that crime is still one of our foremost problems," he admitted, "but the decelerating rate of increase provides a basis for cautious optimism." Although crime increased 7% from January through June this year, said Mitchell, that was 4% less than 1970's increase over the year before. In other words, things are getting worse more slowly.

Deceptive Gains. The Attorney General pointed out that 50 cities with populations of more than 100,000 reported reductions in the amount of violent crime; last year 34 such cities reported reductions. What is more, Washington, D.C., "the only city over which the Federal Government has jurisdiction," as Mitchell observed, recorded a 16% decrease in serious crime during the first half of 1971. Trouble is, the gains Mitchell reported are like a set of cooked corporate books--deceptive.

A more balanced assessment of crime trends would have to take into account some less agreeable FBI statistics. They report, among other things, a 17% increase in violent crimes in the suburbs during the first six months of this year. They also indicate what Mitchell did not say, that most of the nation's largest cities showed increases in at least one of the four categories of violent crime; two of the cities--New York and Philadelphia--registered increases across the board. Washington, which Mitchell singled out for special praise, had more murders and rapes during the first half of the year than in the same period of 1970, while robberies and assaults declined only slightly. What principally accounted for crime reduction in the District of Columbia were substantial decreases in property crimes: burglary, larceny and auto theft.

Extraordinarily Inept. Mitchell's "decelerating rate of increase" is not to be discounted entirely; however misleading, it does represent progress of a sort--if the trend continues. But Nixon and Mitchell can take little credit for the improvement, just as they could not logically blame the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations for the rising crime rates of the early and middle 1960s. Crime is overwhelmingly the concern of local police agencies. Apart from trying to set up a framework of public order, and occasional FBI assistance, there is little the Federal Government can do to aid local law-enforcement agencies. Since 1968, Washington has been contributing funds to state and local police agencies through the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), but the handling of the program has been extraordinarily inept.

The history of the LEAA has been one of waste and mismanagement. A House subcommittee investigation last July turned up testimony that only a fraction of the $860 million appropriated by Congress as federal anticrime funds had actually reached the local agencies for which the money was intended. One witness described in detail the misuse of LEAA funds in Alabama; for example, $117,247 earmarked for a police-cadet program was used to pay college tuition for children of high-ranking officials in the state's department of public safety and their friends.

Boondoggling. Part of LEAA's difficulties can be attributed to its newness; birth pangs plague any bureaucratic infant. It boasts the fastest-growing budget of any federal agency: LEAA appropriations have jumped from $63 million in fiscal 1969 to $699 million in the current fiscal year. The agency also limped along for ten months without a chief administrator. Jerris Leonard, a Mitchell protege who was less than a smashing success as the Justice Department's civil rights chief, finally moved over to run LEAA last April. Still, the one channel through which the Administration could have made a substantial contribution to combatting crime has been clogged by bungling and boondoggling.

The Democrats have yet to blast Nixon for his poor performance on crime. One reason is that they are equally short of answers. Once the 1972 presidential campaign begins in earnest, however, it will be awfully tempting for the Democratic nominee to take the President to task, a copy of Nixon's 1968 campaign speeches in one hand, the latest FBI crime statistics in the other.

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