Toeing the Hard Line

Without Watergate to wallow in, it was probably inevitable that the nation would return to crime time. Last week President Gerald Ford, Attorney General William Saxbe, and FBI Director Clarence Kelley all went before the annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police to toe the hard line and vow a further offensive against criminals.

Why refocus attention on murder and mugging just now? For one thing, crime statistics have resumed their frightening rise, and it is natural for politicians to sound irate about them during the fall campaign. The White House may also wish to restore its law-and-order credentials after the furor over the Nixon pardon.

Drawing enthusiastic applause from the 3,000 chiefs, Ford said that "we must ensure that swift and prolonged imprisonment will inevitably follow each and every offense." He announced that the Justice Department would soon be working with state and local officials to emphasize jailing "career criminals." A new police unit tracks such offenders in Washington, D.C., and "has dramatically reduced the ability of case-hardened offenders to escape through the loopholes of the criminal justice system," said Ford. Saxbe, in his turn, trotted out those familiar villains "bleeding hearts" and "starry-eyed" theorists. Kelley, as expected, defended police, saying that "our profession should not be a whipping boy."

However predictable, last week's rhetoric reflected deeply troubling facts. Crime statistics--though a fallible indicator at best--showed a 4% decrease in 1972. Many believed then that the Nixon Administration's policy of giving heavy federal subsidies to state and local police was finally paying off. But the crime rate, as measured by the FBI, went back on the upswing last year. TIME learned that new figures this week will show a 16% increase for the first half of 1974.

What went wrong? And what was going right in 1972? The six-year-old Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which distributes federal funds throughout the nation, has steadily increased its grants (from $63 million in fiscal 1969 to $910 million in the current budget). Even law-and-order advocates are disillusioned. Says Northwestern Law Professor Fred Inbau, president of Americans for Effective Law Enforcement: "The Federal Government has been trying to buy this nation's way out of its crime problem. It hasn't worked." Once again it is unclear just what tactics do work against crime.

What did emerge last week was a growing sense that, as Saxbe said, "much of the fault must rest with prosecutions and the courts." Both liberal and conservative critics of U.S. criminal justice have long complained about inattention to the courts (as well as prisons and probation services). "In the cities, where the crime is, we fail to develop reasonably swift means of handling charges," says Norval Morris, the University of Chicago criminal-law expert. Thus far, most of the LEAA funds have been tagged for police; prisons get the next largest share while the judicial system receives the smallest allotment. With Saxbe's backing, perhaps more financial support for the courts will finally be recognized as a hard-nosed law-and-order approach that promises a real payoff.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.