THE CRIME WAVE
America has been far from successful in dealing with the sort of crime that obsesses Americans day and night--I mean street crime, crime that invades our neighborhoods and our homes--murders, robberies, rapes, muggings, holdups, break-ins--the kind of brutal violence that makes us fearful of strangers and afraid to go out at night.
So said President Gerald Ford last week as he sent a special message to Congress on a subject that has long plagued the nation and frustrated several Administrations: the nation's continuing crime wave.
Ford's characterization of anticrime efforts as being "far from successful" is a major understatement. After all the past rhetoric and all the past campaigns against crime, conditions only got worse. Even as the White House was preparing the message to Congress, the incidents of violence and stealth that have terrorized so many millions of Americans were continuing across the nation. In one 72-hour period, eleven persons were killed in Atlanta, six by gunfire. In Detroit Beach, Mich., a woman watching her four-year-old grandson at play saw him stabbed to death by a teenage boy who was apparently after the 40-c- that the child had in his pocket. In New York City this spring, police charged a gang of six teen-agers--one of whom was 13--with murdering three elderly and penniless men by asphyxiation. One man died with his prayer shawl stuffed into his mouth.
Directed at a problem of this intensity and scope, Ford's message was generally devoid of optimistic promises. It was realistic about the limited role that the Federal Government can play in fighting crime, which is largely under state and local jurisdiction. The main thrust of Ford's proposals was to ensure that serious offenders go to prison. In this he seemed to reflect a growing consensus of both liberals and conservatives. Ford called for mandatory jailing, with certain exceptions, of persons who commit violent offenses under federal jurisdiction. He also urged a reform of the chaotic system of federal laws. State legislatures should follow suit, he suggested, and he asked Congress to authorize $6.8 billion for Law Enforcement Assistance Administration grants to local and state governments between now and 1981. In several states, victims of crimes receive compensation for their physical injuries; Ford now proposes awards of up to $50,000 for those hurt in federal crimes.
In one major respect, the President's recommendations were disappointingly weak. Although he agreed with countless criminologists that handguns "play a key role" in the current rise of violent crime, Ford failed to endorse measures that many experts believe are necessary to stop that increase. He declared himself "unalterably opposed to federal registration of guns or gun owners." He did, however, make one important proposal: a ban on the manufacture, assembly or sale--though not the possession--of "Saturday night specials," the cheap, easily concealed pistols that have been flooding American cities and turning thousands of quarrels and robberies into murders.
In sending his message to Congress, the President insisted that he was not talking about law-and-order, the Nixon slogan that turned out to be so empty. Yet, Ford added, "we can and must make our legal system what it was always intended--a means of ensuring 'domestic tranquillity' and making America safe for decent, law-abiding citizens."
TIME devotes this three-part report to the challenging problem. The first part describes the current crime wave and the way Americans are coping with it. The second section explores the causes of crime. What to do about it? The conclusion explains that, short of desirable but unlikely societal cure-alls, there are specific reforms in the juvenile-and criminal-justice systems that could help reduce crime.
STATISTICS: ALL TRENDS ARE UP
By any measurement, crime has become an ominous national problem. Since 1961 the rate for all serious crimes has more than doubled. From 1973 to 1974 it jumped 17%--the largest increase in the 44 years that national statistics have been collected.
Violent crime has had an even sharper increase. In the past 14 years, the rate of robberies has increased 255%, forcible rape 143%, aggravated assault 153% and murder 106% (see chart). Preliminary reports to the FBI this year show that the rate for violent crimes as well as property crimes like burglary is still sharply on the rise. Says a Chicago cop: "You just can't paint the picture too bad."
Although cities have the highest rates of crime, the rate of increase is now actually greater in the suburbs (up 20% last year) and in rural areas (up 21%). In Milford, Conn., once a peaceful small city on Long Island Sound, assaults were up 303% and burglaries 78% in 1974 over 1973, and the figures are still climbing. The main culprits there are gangs of white, middle-class youths; they have so terrorized some residents that they do not report thefts and beatings for fear of reprisals.
In the country town of Bluffton, Ga., robbers broke into a grocery store, lined up the four employees and executed each with a shot in the back of the head. That week five other people were killed in the rural areas of Georgia. According to a Harris poll taken in March, Southerners are more worried about crime than other Americans.
Of all crime statistics, homicide figures are the most reliable: a body count--more than 20,000 in 1974--shows that Americans are killing each other in wholesale lots, and randomly as well. Traditionally, murders have been crimes of passion or the outcome of quarrels between relatives or friends. As far as police can determine, 34% of the 1,554 people killed in New York City in 1974 did not know their assailants. Of all violent crimes, 65% are committed against strangers.
CRIMINALS: YOUNG AND VIOLENT
Since so few burglars, rapists and muggers are caught (only 20% of the FBI's 10 million reported crimes resulted in arrests last year), the profile of the criminal is hard to draw. Some basic facts are indisputable, however. Almost half of all arrests are of teen-agers and young adults; indeed, 15 is the peak age for violent crimes. Forty-four percent of the nation's murderers are 25 or younger, and 10% are under 18. Of those arrested for street crimes, excluding murder, fully 75% are under 25 and 45% are under 18.
The youths who are terrorizing the cities often belong to gangs, but gone are the old-style rumbles with switchblade knives and zip guns (see box page 12). Even criminals are frightened to work the streets in big-city areas. "I myself walk light when I'm in the ghetto," says a Chicago holdup man. "I know the value of life has no weight. These younger criminals, they're sick. They have no motive for what they're doing."
A high proportion of today's criminals are black. Of those arrested for murder last year, 56% were blacks; for rape, 45%; for robbery, 63%; for burglary and larceny-theft, 30%. The victims are also mostly black. Of the nation's murder victims last year, 51% were black. Although interracial rape seems to be increasing, most black rapists still assault black women, just as most white rapists assault white women.
The majority of criminals are male, but an increasing number of females are joining their ranks. Of those arrested for larceny-theft last year, 33% were female. Women are also becoming more violent. In the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, a gang of young black women has been assaulting and robbing dozens of old people for the past six months; two victims died of heart attacks that resulted from beatings by the gang.
About 70% of all adults imprisoned for serious crime are repeaters who have already been in jail at least once before. Many are on parole or probation. One man in Houston was arrested for thievery and released eleven times in 18 months without ever going to trial. The same is true for juvenile criminals. A study done by Marvin E. Wolfgang, a sociologist and law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that 627 out of 10,000 youths in Philadelphia became chronic offenders. They were responsible for two-thirds of the violent acts and 52% of all offenses committed by the group over an eight-year period.
THE CITIES: CANYONS OF FEAR
Within the U.S., crime, and the way people cope with it, vary widely from city to city. Houston, for example, sprawls over 503 square miles, and its population of blacks and Mexican Americans is spread throughout the city rather than concentrated in a ghetto. The unemployment rate is relatively low. Apparently for these reasons, Houston, the fifth largest city in the U.S., has a crime rate that ranks it 34th among the nation's big cities; and no one hesitates to go downtown at night.
Large sections of Chicago's West and South sides, on the other hand, are canyons of fear at night, the bailiwick of stickup men and roaming bands of toughs. As in other crime-ridden cities, elderly Chicagoans are nervous about going out, especially when they see their apartment buildings ringed by young hoodlums on the days when welfare and Social Security checks arrive.
Last year the highest homicide rate in any metropolitan area was in Atlanta, a city that is now 55% black, with an unemployment rate of 9.3%, a large population of poor people, and a city-wide arsenal of privately owned guns that, it is estimated, would provide two weapons for every man, woman and child. A study made by a mathematician at M.I.T. showed that one out of every eleven children born in Atlanta in 1974 who stayed in the city would eventually be killed if the murder rate continued to grow as it has in the past.
Everywhere, the ghettos have the highest rates of crime. Especially vulnerable are sprawling public housing complexes like Atlanta's Bankhead Courts, where 90% or more of the 2,900 families are on welfare and are headed by females. Some of the families have been burglarized half a dozen times or more in the past year. Welfare checks are stolen regularly, along with easily sold items like TV sets. Mothers tell stories of thieves who raid one room of their apartments while they are in another.
DEFENSES: GUNS AND WATCHDOGS
Because of their fears, millions of Americans are arming themselves. "We're getting a lot of nice upper-class couples who are buying pistols," says James Bell Jr., vice president of Bell's Gun and Sport Inc. in Franklin Park, Ill. "They're even getting his-and-her guns." About 40% of Bell's clientele are female--young working women as well as elderly widows. Other weapons favored by frightened women: the old-fashioned hatpin, a tear-gas capsule, a can of oven cleaner (which contains lye).
In Chicago, the 1,500-member Coalition of Concerned Women in the War on Crime has launched Operation Whistlestop. When they spot trouble, residents of certain high-crime areas rush to the scene, blowing their whistles. In lower Manhattan, some 135 residents of the East Third Street Block Association are being given a pocket device to carry on the street. When activated, it will set off a loud alarm attached to a nearby building, alerting neighbors to call the police.
Across the country the demand is booming for security guards. Banks and office buildings are now hiring professional guards who often have police backgrounds, in place of elderly pensioners who used to double as janitors and messenger boys. Denver has 2,469 private cops, compared with a police force of 1,400. Nationwide, the army of private guards now nearly equals the number of police.
Guard dogs are also popular, both at home and at work. German shepherds or Doberman pinschers can be turned loose at night in a store, or leashed, can patrol with a trainer. "Since the beginning of the year, business has been unreal," says Chuck Stewart, who manages Continental Canines Inc. in Los Angeles. "We've got dogs at doctors' offices, waterbed stores, landscapers, dress manufacturers and cemeteries."
VIGILANTES: FAIR MEANS OR FOUL
As a further means of protection, Americans are forming vigilante groups. In many residential neighborhoods of major cities, men come home from the office, hurry through dinner and then go out to take their turns patrolling the nearby streets. Usually they are armed with nothing more than clubs and whistles. In Chicago's Woodlawn, a secret organization composed of 22 blacks, half of whom are Viet Nam veterans, has sworn to eradicate crime in the ghetto area by fair means or foul. Late at night and early in the morning, members of the group walk the avenues and alleys of their neighborhood, meting out their own law-and-order to those they consider criminals. "Every now and then, folks dealing in dope get their doors kicked in and their shit messed up," says one member of the unit. "When we find someone doing wrong, we wear his ass out. A purse-snatcher might end up with two broken hands." The vigilantes, however, do not always escape unscathed. So far, two have been stabbed while making their rounds.
The impoverished streets of Woodlawn are a world removed from Sugar Creek, a country-club housing development outside Houston, where electronic sentries stand watch over houses costing up to $250,000. Should an entry be attempted while no one is at home, a central computer begins a series of responses. Within seconds, all lights in the house are turned on. Forty seconds later, alarm bells start ringing in the house. Then the computer signals the main gatehouse with a high-frequency beeper, simultaneously printing out on a teletype machine the address and phone number of the endangered home, plus the exact time of the message.
Since the first families moved into Sugar Creek four years ago, the worst "crimes" have been youthful pranks--broken windows, street lights shot out with BB guns. The sort of thing, in fact, that used to worry policemen in thousands of communities across the country. That was before crime became a blight on America, the dark side of a society dedicated to freedom.
THE CAUSES
This is not the first time the nation has been shocked by the scope of its crime problem. In the middle and late 19th century, sudden prosperity, immigration and the dislocations of the Civil War produced several crime waves. In 1855 the gang population of New York stood at 30,000, and one gang posted notices that any policeman wandering into its neighborhood would be shot. At the turn of the century, Chicago saloonkeepers could expect to be held up every three or four days. Innocent gas-meter readers were being shot by paranoid householders. Newspapers observed that there were too many six-year-old boys roaming the streets armed with knives and guns, and the mayor of Chicago suggested that the crime problem would be solved if citizens would "carry revolvers strapped outside their clothing." In San Francisco, a brawling town with more than 8,000 saloons, no streets were safe at night; murder, shanghaiing and piracy were facts of life.
Outside the cities, conditions were not much better. It is both legend and fact that in much of the South and West, differences were commonly settled by the gun or the noose. America pushed west with extraordinary violence, and the easy justification for its use goes deep into the American character, helping to create one of the world's highest rates of violent crime. Though world statistics are notoriously unreliable, only a few countries--including Colombia and Mexico, with their macho pride--report higher homicide rates. But obviously such a tradition in itself does not explain today's soaring incidence of crime. "Everything we touch hits the next question," said one sponsor of a university conference on the causes of crime. Following are some of the current theories about crime, no one of which, to be sure, fully explains it:
SOCIETY: THE BREEDING GROUNDS
According to most sociologists, as freedom increases, so does crime. Says Marvin Wolfgang: "Historically and cross-culturally, the countries that have greater amounts of individual liberty and freedom have probably experienced a greater amount of social deviance. But that is one of the values we extol--freedom to be different." Neither China nor the U.S.S.R. releases crime statistics, but China's problem, for example, is apparently minimal, presumably because of heavy indoctrination and severe social controls. Although its crime rate is rising the Soviet Union seems to have far less cause for alarm than the U.S.
England, which has individual liberty but also a largely homogeneous population, still has a relatively low crime rate. So does Japan. "Homogeneity is an important factor," says Wolfgang. "It promotes a social bond and collectivity, a sense of all of us being alike and together. In the highly heterogeneous countries, the pluralism of ethnic groups tends to promote a separateness, anonymity and alienation."
Wolfgang believes that "subcultures of violence" are sometimes created by groups with values at odds with those of the larger society. In such groups, "quick resort to physical combat as a measure of daring, courage or defense of status appears to be a cultural expression." Violence is normal, expected behavior in some youth gangs.
Many theorists believe that rapid economic development breeds crime. An Asian official once asked Norval Morris, now the dean of the University of Chicago Law School, how his country could avoid a high rate of juvenile crime. Morris replied: Just make sure your people remain illiterate, backward, hopeless and confined to their isolated villages for most of their lives. Morris was echoing the theory of the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), who wrote about crime as an essential feature of a developing society and a predictable byproduct of rapid social change. Great bursts of crime occur when sudden prosperity or quick technological development unleashes "overweening ambition," wrote Durkheim. Expectations rise to unreasonable heights, and in the economic stampede that follows, some people move ahead legitimately, while others trample the rules, and crime soars.
Contemporary sociologists blame America's excessive stress on material gains which are, however, often denied people (Columbia's Robert K. Merton) or the bitterness of being a failure in a society that is supposed to offer equal chances to all (Harvard's Seymour Lipset). But frustrated goals by themselves are insufficient explanations; after all, why not work for those goals instead of breaking the law? Answer: either because no work is available or because the jobs that are available are too readily scorned--especially when crime seems profitable and only rarely punished. This rather common-sense view is expressed by Harvard Government Professor James Q. Wilson in his new book Thinking About Crime (Basic Books). Writes Wilson: "The benefits of work and the costs of crime must be increased simultaneously; to increase one but not the other makes sense only if one assumes that young people are irrational."
The rise of crime rates since the early '60s has paralleled the rise in teenage, and particularly black teen-age unemployment. At least 40% of black teen-agers who are now looking for work are unable to find it. Tom Wicker, the New York Times columnist and author of A Time to Die, a noted book about the Attica uprising, suggests that the rise in crime may be due to the "development of something like a permanent underclass, not so much exploited as left behind--an economic substratum unable to rise by unskilled labor that is no longer in demand, unable to compete in a highly organized technological society, heavily damaged by being in the cities, predominantly black in a white environment, and embittered by evidence all around of its hopeless disadvantage."
If an individual has a "stake" in society, sociologists emphasize, he is less likely to become criminal than someone with no job and no future. This is true regardless of race. Crime rates in tawdry sections of Chicago have remained high over the decades, though inhabited at different times by Swedes, Poles, Germans, Italians, Syrians and blacks. Says Sociologist Lloyd Ohlin: "Slums of the big cities have always been the main source of recruitment to street crime, no matter who lived there." Says Norval Morris: "It is trite but it remains true that the main causes of crime are social and economic. The question arises whether people really care. The solutions are so obvious. It's almost as if America wished for a high crime rate."
DEMOGRAPHY: TOO MANY YOUTHS
America's post-World War II baby boom has swollen the traditional crime-prone age bracket (14 to 24) as never before--and possibly never again. In 1950 there were 24 million young Americans in this age group. A decade later it was 27 million, and now it is 44 million; the bulge will not disappear until the 1980s.
Enormous as the increase in the youthful population has been, however, it is not big enough to explain the even greater rise in youthful criminality. James Q. Wilson suggests that the growth in the number of youths has increased the rate of youth crime: a "critical mass" of youngsters has been produced, and with it separate norms and peer pressure that make adult controls difficult. As Princeton Demographer Norman Ryder sees it, there is "a perennial invasion of barbarians" who must somehow be civilized and made to contribute to society. In 1960 the "defending army" of those between 25 and 64 was three times the size of the "invading army" of youths aged 14 to 24. Now the defenders are only twice the number of the invaders and seem to be losing control of the battle to assimilate and socialize the young.
PSYCHOLOGY: DANGER AT HOME
Many psychologists and psychiatrists point an accusing finger at faulty parent-child relationships, particularly early in a child's life. Studies show that overly lax, overly strict or erratic child rearing contributes to delinquency, while a generally "firm but kind" approach inhibits it.
University of Southern California Psychiatrist Edward Stainbrook attributes some of today's violence to the difference between this generation of black youths and their fathers. "The last black generation felt tremendously hostile too," he said, "but then there were parental restraints. Now biding your time is no longer enough. Angry defiance is acceptable."
Children are more likely to turn to crime if parents battle frequently, or if one parent is missing through death, divorce or abandonment. The stresses on blacks seem particularly severe. A decade ago, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then Assistant Secretary of Labor, published his report on the black family in America, 24% of these families were headed by a woman, with no father present. Now the figure is 35%. Says James Q. Wilson: "The forces that continue to operate on the black family, particularly in the inner city, continue to create situations in which young people are hopelessly disadvantaged."
Other studies make it clear that much of today's violence is learned in the home, and that child abuse is on the rise. The Fortune Society, a group of ex-convicts, reports that more than half its membership had been severely abused as children. A New York study of nine juvenile murderers, including a girl who had chopped a victim to pieces with a machete knife, showed that all nine had been routinely beaten by their parents. Other youths who commit and later talk about the most heinous crimes with peculiar indifference "don't seem to realize they are putting a knife into another human being," says Willard Gaylin, professor of psychiatry and law at Columbia University. Gaylin believes this insensibility stems from a lack of identity with anyone else or with the community. "These kids have been so brutalized that there is no guilt for one to work with," said one New York juvenile investigator.
The mayhem on TV probably has something to do with teen-age violence as well. One study claims that the average American youth can be expected to watch 11,000 TV murders by the time he is 14. In Boston, a woman was doused with gasoline and set afire shortly after a TV movie featured a similar scene. In Chicago, several murders have followed in vivid detail some inventive killings in the TV detective series Shaft.
MORALS: THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM
"Adults are confused and at a loss," says Psychiatrist Bernard Yudowitz. "They don't know what standards to set for their children or themselves. The bells that used to ring in your head to say no aren't ringing any more."
Urbanologist Edward Banfield and others see a slippery morality emerging from the 1960s: the idea that disadvantaged groups "have a kind of quasi right to have their offenses against the law extenuated, or even to have them regarded as political acts reflecting a morality 'higher' than obedience to the law." Says Gerald Caplan, director of the research branch of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration: "Is the black fellow who steals a car a victim of society or its enemy? Is Spiro Agnew a political victim or a predator on society? People have varying answers."
It seems that every group has caught the knack of rationalizing away violations of the law, from Watergate conspirators to antiwar bombers and young black criminals who define assaults as "political acts." Says Frederick Hacker, a University of Southern California professor of psychiatry and law: "There have been an increasing criminalization of politics and a politicalization of criminals. It's reached the point where there are no criminals in San Quentin any more. They're all freedom fighters."
It seems clear that some of the old values and restraints have been battered by recent upheavals--war, riots, assassinations, racial strife, situational ethics, the youth rebellion. As disillusionment sets in, fewer and fewer Americans look to the churches, schools or Washington for moral leadership. Stern observers of today's widespread ethical torpor tend to agree with the 19th century French criminologist Jean Lacassagne: "A society gets the criminals it deserves."
WHAT CAN BE DONE
There is probably no subject on which liberals and conservatives split more sharply than the causes and cures of crime. Liberals emphasize the unjust social conditions that are its breeding ground: slums, unemployment, poor education, racism, poverty amid affluence. Says former Attorney General Ramsey Clark: "We've got to deal massively and constructively with these problems before we can hope to curb crime."
Conservatives are more apt to believe that deliberation, not desperation, is the root of crime. Says another former Attorney General, William Saxbe, a foe of permissiveness and leniency in the courts: "I believe a great many offenders commit crimes because they want to commit them." The disagreement is classic and deep. To conservalives, man has always been flawed by original sin--or simply human weakness--but is in control of his own fate. To help him control it, the good society is obliged to emphasize a strong moral order, a respect for law and a confidence in punishment as a deterrent to crime.
The right-left split so permeates legal thinking that Walter B. Miller of Harvard Law School's Center for Criminal Justice maintains that "ideology is the permanent, hidden agenda of criminal justice." But ideological differences have recently started to blur under the impact of America's apparently permanent crime wave, and there is a renewed interest on all sides in making sure that violent criminals get locked up. As Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo likes to put it: "A conservative is a liberal who was mugged the night before." Says Criminologist Marvin Wolfgang, "We liberals are finally willing to talk about punishment."
The familiar fact is that the vastly troubled criminal-justice system often exacts no price at all for crime. An adult burglar has only one chance in 412 of going to jail for any single job, according to Gregory Krohm of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Center for the Study of Public Choice. For juveniles under 17, the figure is one in 659 burglaries, with a likelihood of only a nine-month term if the 659-to-1 shot comes in. Many critics are convinced that such odds were created in large part by those constitutional-law rulings of the Warren Court that expanded the rights of criminal defendants. Mapp, Escobedo, Miranda and Wade are still names that enrage law-and-order advocates. But despite all the years of talk and four Nixon appointments, the court has so far been willing only to trim some of the rules, not reverse them. The new rulings obviously add to the work of the courts, and some experts believe that they have hampered the criminal-justice system's capacity to convict guilty offenders, though as yet there have been no studies demonstrating any such significant damage.
For the problems in meting out justice, cops lay the blame on the higher courts, the courts on the cops, while trial judges tend to tag the prisons. All are in a way correct. The whole system--from criminal code to prison release--must be reformed from a single perspective: to speed, regularize and rationalize the process of law enforcement. The choice, says Ohio Judge John Patton, is whether "we dispense justice or dispense with it." Unfortunately, there is no single reform that will straighten out the states' tangled and varied procedures. But there are a number of steps that can be taken. Following is a consensus of pragmatic current thinking about the laws, the police, the courts and the prisons:
LAWS: FEWER AND BETTER
"We can have as much or as little crime as we please, depending on what we choose to count as criminal," wrote the late Herbert Packer in his modern classic, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Packer argued that far too many offenses are now included in most state penal codes--offenses like adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, prostitution and pornography.
Nonviolent sexual crimes are not the only targets of reformers. Other so-called victimless offenses that should be decriminalized include marijuana use, gambling and public drunkenness. Although such offenses are usually less time-consuming for cops and courts to process than other crimes, Criminologist Hans Mattick of the University of Illinois has calculated that victimless crime accounts for at least 40% of all arrests.
Looking to tougher laws for relief is also a matter of misplaced emphasis. The lengthy and emotional debate about capital punishment, for example, has profound moral implications, but the death penalty alone cannot make major inroads on serious crime. More important than any harsh penalty, criminologists agree, is increasing the likelihood of an offender's getting caught and convicted. American criminal penalties, in fact, are already among the harshest in the world. The problem comes in enforcing them. Says Gerald Caplan, research director of the L.E.A.A.: "The chief characteristic of law enforcement in this country is underenforcement." Everyone in the system has broad discretion--cops on whether to arrest, district attorneys on whether and how hard to prosecute, judges on the length of the sentence, and penal or parole authorities on when to award freedom. "Nothing is absolute," says American University Criminologist Nicholas Kittrie. "Everybody plays games." Little improvement is likely, say Kittrie and others, "until broad, wide-ranging criminal penalties and statutes are drawn more narrowly and more humanely." Since state legislators do not have enough time or expertise to name specific penalties for each crime, each legislature should establish a commission to set and adjust rules for the entire criminal-justice system.
The most important step that lawmakers could take, however, would be in the area of gun control. Convinced beyond any doubt that guns are an irreplaceable ingredient in most planned and unplanned mayhem, many criminologists and police chiefs would like a total ban on all guns for everyone--except police, the military and, with some limitations, sport hunters and shooters. Such a federal law has not the remotest chance of passage, however. Indeed, the prospects for major new controls this year are so dim that the ever-alert National Rifle Association has yet to unlimber its prodigious anti-control lobbying program. President Ford's disappointing stand last week scarcely changed the situation. Despite signs of growing grass-roots support for tougher gun laws, Americans will apparently have to settle for the President's proposed ban on "Saturday night specials," an idea even the N.R.A. endorses.
POLICE: STRATEGIC INNOVATIONS
Fear of robbers always seems to build up hopes about cops. Since 1967, $3 billion has been spent in the "war on crime" by the L.E.A.A., and more than half of that bounty has been distributed to the nation's police forces. Along with a great deal of elaborate equipment (a helicopter for Atlanta and an armored tank for Birmingham), the money has provided needed modernization for dozens of departments. A number of important things about police techniques have also been learned from L.E.A.A. and other research. Unfortunately most of the findings have tended to show what does not work. Squad-car cruising, for example, was long thought critical to crime control; then a 1974 study in Kansas City, Mo., showed little crime variation no matter how few or many cruisers were patrolling test areas. Looking at the vast array of police experimentation, the L.E.A.A.'S Caplan says, "There have been no breakthroughs, and none are on the horizon."
The most fruitful experiments have been concerned with getting more citizen participation and cooperation. Cincinnati is one of many cities to try increasing the connection between a neighborhood and police by giving a team of officers complete responsibility for a single area. Initially crime in those areas went down 10%, though the most recent figures are less encouraging.
Realizing that many people, especially ghetto blacks, are afraid of violent overreaction by law-enforcement officials, Kansas City Police Chief Joseph McNamara has imposed a tough policy on the use of weapons. In response, K.C. cops last year fired their guns at people 80% fewer times than in 1973 and at the same time were able to make a dramatic increase in the number of arrests. The figures did not reflect merely a hike in crime. Says McNamara: "Kansas Citians, especially those in our minority community, now feel more comfortable with the police."
Other strategic innovations can also help. Determined to do something about Detroit's murders, police there formed two special units, one to concentrate on drug-ring murders and one on murders committed during robberies or other felony crimes. The payoff has been a solution rate of more than 80% for both categories. Police in Portland, Ore., for their part, have a special unit to bust fencing operations in hopes that burglaries will drop because the swag is harder to get rid of. The rate did indeed drop 16% in the past two years. In New York City, policemen now operate the third largest taxi fleet--some 200 vehicles. It seems taxis make excellent camouflage for stakeouts and street patrol and were involved in half of all arrests made in undercover operations.
Still, an important question about reliance on police remains. The failure of the L.E.A.A. police transfusion to lower the crime rate suggests that more money for the nation's 500,000 men in blue will not help much. Says Assistant Chief Herb Hartz of Tulsa, Okla.: "If the police could somehow become 20% more efficient, can you imagine what would happen? The courts are not equipped to handle that kind of load, and the prisons aren't equipped to handle it either." Indeed they are not. At this point, the President's new L.E.A.A. funds for improvement and innovation in criminal justice could be more usefully spent on the courts or prisons than on the police.
COURTS: EFFICIENCY NEEDED
Many communities simply need more judges. President Ford has now joined those who back a law to create 51 new federal judgeships. While case loads have doubled in the past ten years, the number of judges has gone up by only 25%. Adding judges, of course, means adding the prosecutors, public defenders, clerks and courtrooms that are needed for each judge's work. More prosecutors could also help the courts give extra attention to the habitual offenders, who account for a disproportionate amount of crime. The President took special note in his message of a new Bronx program that in its first year cut the time for dealing with repeaters from 24 to three months and won convictions in 97% of the cases. Judges then imprisoned 95% of those prosecuted.
Even though new judges are needed, however, it must be admitted that not all of them are relentlessly diligent workers. A study in Chicago found that a Cook County jurist's day involved about 2 3/4 hours on the bench, plus 1 3/4 hours in his chambers. Politics also undermines judicial performance. Party sachems designate the men who will be elevated to the bench in such cities as Chicago and New York. The result is too many judges who are little more than party hacks. The best solution has already been adopted in slightly varying forms by 17 states: appointment of judges by the governor from a list of choices offered by a judicial nomination commission.
Some of the other needed court reforms are technical but nonetheless vital. In many cities, different judges handle the various steps leading up to the trial. The trend is now to have one judge handle a case from start to finish. Another useful unification would be a single omnibus hearing to coordinate virtually all pretrial maneuvers--from checking on a lineup's legality to a claim that a confession was illegally obtained. The resulting efficiency would both speed and strengthen justice. Texas Federal Judge Adrian Spears has been trying the idea since 1967, and though his courtroom has a high caseload, its performance rating is ranked near the top by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
The bail system needs attention too. Civil libertarians often oppose bail as a condition of pretrial freedom because it condemns the poor to long waits in jail. Others want to stop granting bail to the potentially dangerous because, once free, they may commit another crime. An experiment that dispenses with bail almost entirely has worked exceptionally well in Des Moines for five years. The director of the program, Bernard Vogelgesang, explains: "We work on a purely objective point system. You lose points for prior convictions, you gain points for length of residence and length of employment." Those who rate well (about 1,935 last year) are let go until trial without bail. Accused offenders who rate as high risks are specially screened by psychologists for potential danger to the community. Those who fail are not released under the experimental program. Those who pass are released, though under relatively careful supervision. Both freed groups return for trial more often than those out on bail used to return. The county-jail population has been cut by a third, as a result of which the program costs less than did the old system.
Oregon has demonstrated that a whole court system can be made to work. Using many of the new generally prescribed reforms and a few of its own, the state began a major overhaul in 1971. Since then delay for criminal cases in Portland has dropped from four months to 1 1/2, making its system the swiftest of any in a U.S. metropolitan area. The judges could go faster, but the city's prosecutors and defenders cannot quite keep up. Statewide, the time from trial to a final disposition of the appeal is now six months, compared with, for example, more than 15 months in Virginia. And Oregon's crime rate has remained steady during the climb elsewhere in the U.S.
PLEA BARGAINS: IMPROVE APPEARANCES
Plea bargaining is the one fixture of the criminal-justice system that is indisputably efficient. It has, however, left observers cynical about its effects. Typically the state permits a defendant to plead guilty to a reduced charge in return for a sure, final and time-saving conviction. That leads to complaints that the deals often let offenders get away, literally, with murder. Civil libertarians, on the other hand, protest that bargains enable the state to get convictions in shaky cases. With serious criminals apparently getting off too lightly and the innocent sometimes getting shafted, plea bargaining has a deservedly disastrous public image and clearly violates the precept of Felix Frankfurter that "justice must satisfy the appearance of justice."
Yet most observers believe the process cannot be eliminated or even cut back significantly. Nationwide, 90% of serious crimes are now cleared by plea bargains. If the rate were cut even to 80%, the trial load would double, a devastating inundation. Says Chicago Judge Marvin Aspen resignedly: "Sometimes you have to rely on things which are antagonistic to the system just so the system won't fall apart."
One proposal that might purify the air around plea bargaining is to allow the victim and the offender to attend a session in which the two opposing lawyers negotiate the offender's plea. The purpose would be to restore at least partly the sense that a fair result had been reached.
THE SENTENCE: CERTAINTY IS THE KEY
As criminals know best, plea bargaining is essentially a way of establishing the length of the sentence. Even when sentencing is handled by a judge who is not bound by a deal, however, it is a wholly irrational process that sometimes results in cellmates serving wildly different terms for the same offense. Sentencing is too often "a projection of the value system of the judge," says Columbia's Willard Gaylin. The resulting excessive disparities, he believes, corrode "the basic structural prop of equity that supports our sense of justice." Virtually every expert in the field now believes that the structure and rationale of sentences need extensive overhauling. Certainty is the key word.
Not long ago, the idea of indeterminate sentencing seemed promising. In principle, that meant an offender was held in prison until authorities believed he was rehabilitated and ready for release. Punishment was supposedly going to fit the criminal, not the crime. But quite apart from the difficulties of achieving any rehabilitation, the discretion involved gave authorities irresistible power to manipulate convict behavior. It was "one of the more exquisite forms of torture," concluded one study. The virtually uniform bitterness of "indeterminated" prisoners has helped convince experts that a complete about-face is now necessary.
President Ford last week endorsed so-called "flat-time" sentencing. The Illinois Law Enforcement Commission recently recommended a version of such a scheme to the general applause of many usually warring criminal-justice factions. Under the plan, anyone convicted of, say, a petty theft would get Two years while an armed robber would get eight years. At the time of sentencing, the total could be reduced or increased by the judge because of mitigating or aggravating circumstances. But apart from that adjustment, a given sentence would be mandatory. Each day of good behavior in prison would earn the convict a day's reduction of the sentence; parole would be abolished. Says Commission Director David Fogel: "Justice requires that everything be clear-cut."
Several experimental programs, which Ford now wants expanded, have diverted some first offenders to rehabilitation programs before trial. If they meet the program's requirements, they avoid a criminal record. For convicted first offenders, however, some experts now favor at least a token imprisonment for all but the most trivial infractions.
Rather than probation, such offenders in non-felony cases would serve a prescribed term of as little as a week up to six months, including the possibility of doing their time on weekends or nights so that work or school opportunities would not be lost. Short "shock treatment" sentences have been used successfully in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky; the claimed benefit is that prisoners get the rectifying jolt of prison without the dehumanization of long exposure to prison life, and there has been a lower than average recidivism rate
As for those who are convicted of felonies, the sentence should be at least a year, and a serious offender who has committed two earlier crimes of any kind should get a set sentence of at least three years. "Inmates as a group understand punishment is what they've got coming," says Raymond Procunier, former chief of California's department of corrections. "They want someone to tell them exactly how long they have to do."
PRISONERS: BEYOND REHABILITIATION
"I have not heard an intellectually respectable defense of criminal rehabilitation James Q. Wilson says flatly. According to Criminologist Hans Mattick, "The prisons have become largely drama schools which force people to act as if they were rehabilitated along stereotyped conventions." Concludes Columbia Sociologist Robert Martinson after studying hundreds of programs for 20 years: "The prison which makes every effort at rehabilitation succeeds no better than the prison which leaves its inmates to rot." Succeeds, that is, in reducing the huge number of repeat offenders (70% of inmates). Improved behavior inside the walls turns out to be no indication of behavior after prison. As Mattick says, "It is hard to train an aviator in a submarine."
Many of America's 500,000 prisoners are now given various mixtures of vocational training, individual therapy, group therapy or behavior modification in efforts at rehabilitation. All in themselves can be effective, but one element is critical to their sucess: the capacity to volunteer for them. In today's prison that is all but nonexistent. A prisoner who refuses to enter a rehabilitative program almost always has to suffer either a longer term or significantly poorer living conditions because of his refusal. "Everybody I know gets rehabilitated the moment he gets caught," sniffs a California ex-con.
"What is launched as an incentive system turns out to be a barrier to the treatment itself," writes the University of Chicago's Norval Morris in a valuable new book Called The Future of Imprisonment (University of Chicago Press). Morris believes that if "the hypocrisy" of rehabilitation as a purpose of imprisonment were set aside, the prison culture would be better off. "Probably the majority of prisoners, like the majority outside the walls, are content themselves as they are. Yet this does not mean that treatment programs need to be abandoned," says Morris. Prisons do contain a "disproportionate number of the undereducated, vocationally handicapped and psychologically disturbed," and for them various kinds of therapy or training should be available. Said the President last week: "While the problem of criminal rehabilitation is difficult, we must not give up on our efforts to achieve it." Indeed such programs need to be expanded. But they must be freely chosen.
One institution that is rigorously trying the free-choice approach is the so-called Just Community in Niantic, Conn. Parole is granted only after a pre-determined sentence is served, and there is no connection between getting out and participating in the educational and other-special rehabilitative programs that are offered. The main effort is to get the prisoners--both men and women--to participate in running the prison and to learn to be responsible for their own action. All decisions are left up to the majority, with guards and prisoners entitled to one vote each. "They're the ones who have to decide what to do about the smelly kitchen when the garbage isn't taken out," says Director Joseph Hickey. "They are learning that you have to confront a problem, that life is painful and that you have to deal with it." Hickey claims: "I don't do this to reform inmates. I do it to reform the system.''
One key to the Just Community is its size (only 30 inmates). Experts are uniformly convinced that large "fortress" prisons are an unmitigated contamination of criminal justice. The only solution for San Quentin, reported one corrections official who had been sent to investigate the prison's violence and living conditions, is "200 Ibs. of TNT." He got no argument from superiors. Already, the populations of such oldtime "big houses" are being cut down. In Minnesota there are tentative plans to close the 775-man state prison at Stillwater. One problem, however, is to get communities to accept the new, smaller institutions.
Nevertheless, criminals should be detained close to home, criminologists and convicts alike agree (see box). Small prisons in the community would help in part by making brief home furloughs, study and work-release programs and halfway houses more feasible. But, says Northwestern Law Professor John P. Heinz, "we shouldn't do community treatment because we know it's better. We don't. But we know it's not worse and it's cheaper and more humane and probably doesn't create as much resentment and bitterness."
Even a reformed system, say cautious critics, should not be expected to do much more than punish and isolate offenders from society. "Whether or not prisoners will change is not the issue," says Joe Hickey. "To the extent that people see criminal-justice system as fair, to that extent will they have more respect for the law. We would be ahead if we could even make sure they don't come out worse than they went it. Nobody's done that.
Nobody has done much, either, about prisoners once they get out. Many must turn immediately to welfare and often go hungry during the few days before the payments start. Employment is extra hard to come by, since many laws bar ex-cons outright from an unnecessarily long list of jobs. The President in his message addressed the politically profitless problem by directing the U.S. Civil Service Commission to ensure that federal employers and not "unjustly discriminating against ex-felons"
JUVENILE JUSTICE: WORSE THAN ADULTS'
The juvenile-justice system in the U.S. is a miniature of the whole criminal-justice structure, but its problems are, if anything, even larger. Nationally there are 2,975 juvenile courts and 3,202 judges hearing approximately a million cases a year, as well as, in some areas, ruling on family problems like alimony and child support. In most states, these courts have jurisdiction in cases involving youths 18 and under. The current trend is to try to lower the age limit--in California from 18 to 16, in Illinois from 17 to 14, in New York from 16 to 14 --so that serious offenders can be tried like adults and be given adult penalties.
Even when they are tried as juveniles, however, young defendants enjoy many of the rights of an adult. The Supreme Court's 1967 in re Gault decision held that children, too, must be told of the charges against them, given a chance to confront their accusers and allowed to consult with an attorney. Not every protection is granted, however, which has left juvenile courts like neither the adult model nor the more informal, paternal tribunals that were once supposed to be the system's ideal.
The shift toward giving juveniles more rights is badly compromised by the enormous glut of problems the juvenile courts handle. One widely approved reform would be to remove their jurisdiction over "status offenders"--youths who have committed no crimes (or at least have not been caught) but are troublesome to their parents, their neighbors or the schools. Currently status offenders account for about 40% of the case load of juvenile courts, making the courts the dumping ground for problems that parents and their communities should be solving. "Runaways and truant cases in court go through the same procedure as rapes and murders," complains Los Angeles County District Attorney Joseph Busch. "That's nonsense. It clutters up the courts." It also fills up the youth prisons--known variously as juvenile halls or training schools, since about half the 100,000 young people incarcerated this year will be status offenders. So bizarre are the workings of the system that they may have to serve more time than youths convicted of crimes including rape and murder.
Perhaps the main source of confusion and despair in the juvenile-justice system is the training school itself. Most judges view it as a breeding ground for physical abuse, sodomy and the criminal arts. The judges' dilemma: whether to send a young offender off to such a place or send him home on probation to the same conflicts, pressures and opportunities for crime that brought him to court in the first place. Says Chicago Judge William S. White: "Often, doing nothing is better than doing something wrong."
The recidivism rate of offenders who are sent to training schools (at a cost of up to $20,000 a year to the state) is a staggering 80%. The result is a revolving door. As more and more judges turn against sentences to training schools, young criminals get off lightly and reappear in court again and again. They now see the system as a joke and know they run little risk of punishment.
The trend is to do away with penal institutions while searching for more alternatives like group or foster homes. Though some critics remain unconvinced of the wisdom of the plan, Illinois has closed eight of its juvenile institutions since 1971 and has 12 left. Massachusetts has dismantled all but one of them. It now has 138 "hardcore incorrigibles" under maximum security, 53 offenders in nonresidential programs, 120 in residential programs (mostly group homes), and 200 in foster homes. The state has had some problems, including passive resistance and occasional sabotage from officials who resent the change. But with the accent on therapy, flexibility and small, humane settings, Massachusetts very tentatively reports a slight lowering of the recidivism rate. Expectations in the juvenile-justice field are currently so low that many believe the experiment should be called a success if its recidivism rate merely remains the same, simply because the community programs are cheaper and more humane.
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 was supposed to supply funds for experiments in "diversion," the term for channeling young offenders away from training schools and into local programs. The $1.5 billion bill was whittled down to $350 million, after resistance from the Nixon Administration, and finally passed under President Ford. But only $25 million has been appropriated for this year, and the President has failed to appoint a permanent administrator or any staff, leaving the new program basically headless, fundless and, thus far, pointless.
As TIME reported in the foregoing pages, a number of things can be done in the criminal-justice system that will surely cut crime, but there are real and imagined difficulties that seem to stand in the way. The cost of changing the system, for example, would be considerable. However, experts believe that once reformed, the courts and prisons would cost about what they do now. There are emotional obstructions too. Deeply held moral taboos argue against decriminalizing many offenses. Strong instincts tell people that owning guns, pumping money into police forces and passing harsh laws will fight crime, when in fact they often undermine its control.
Finally, among those who make the choices of what to do, a kind of frenzied rushing from idea to idea has taken place. "One year it's one fad, the next year another," complains Harvard Law Professor James Vorenberg. The change that is needed will not come overnight, nor will the immediate results be dramatic. A deliberate, long-term effort of perhaps ten years is necessary to complete the job.
With such a commitment, the crime rate might well drop even sooner than 1985. James Q. Wilson estimates that a rational mandatory-sentencing structure alone would quickly cut crime by 20%. Beyond the promise of that gain, there are other reasons that suggest there is now a real chance to halt the growth of crime. The President has offered a sensible though limited agenda. The rapid increase in suburban and rural violence, unfortunate as it is, has spread the constituency of the victimized from the inner cities to most of the nation. Moreover, a country weary of failed panaceas and overreaching rhetoric may be as ready as the experts to settle on the step-by-step changes that draw on both liberal and conservative perceptions. These changes promise not to cure but to help. They constitute a pragmatic program that Americans should support, not merely because of their despair over the present situation but because making justice faster and firmer will also make it fairer.
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