Blueprint for Fighting Crime

A federal panel urges more jails, tighter bail

"Violent crime is pervasive. We can't afford to indulge in long philosophical discourses. We must act immediately." With that stern warning, Associate Attorney General Rudolph Guiliani last week accepted the 192-page report of the Administration's Task Force on Violent Crime. Set up last March and chaired by former Attorney General Griffin Bell and Illinois Republican Governor James Thompson, the eight-member panel recommended a posse of reforms designed to stem the national crime spree.

The panel's most important proposal, according to Bell, is also its most basic: build more prisons. The task force recommends that Washington pay 75% of construction costs over the next four years --some $2 billion--with the states anteing up the rest. Yet the budget-cutting Reaganauts are reluctant to lay out the money; as White House Counsellor Edwin Meese puts it, major funding for any crime-fighting proposals is "very unlikely." Counters Bell: "It's peanuts compared with what the Department of Defense spends."

The recommendation that stands the best chance of being passed by Congress is bail reform. The task force suggests that judges be allowed to consider the "dangerousness" of a defendant before setting him free on bail; in general, judges are now supposed to base their bail decisions only on the likelihood that the accused will flee. Congress is also likely to be sympathetic toward the panel's recommendation that guidelines be set for sentencing and that parole be abolished. No longer would sentences vary wildly from judge to judge for similar crimes, and criminals serving lengthy prison terms would not be set loose after just a few years. The panel would like to patch up a loophole in the 1968 Gun Control Act that allows parts for "Saturday night specials"--though not the guns themselves--to be imported; it would also require a"waiting period" for prospective gun buyers so that authorities could check for criminal records. But President Reagan remains opposed to gun control, and Congress is likely to pass only stiffer penalties for crimes committed with a gun.

The task force recommended loosening the "exclusionary rule," under which illegally obtained evidence is thrown out of court. The panel suggested that if the police could show they were acting "in good faith" when they seized evidence, it could still be introduced at trials--and the guilty would not go free. The task force also proposed limiting habeas corpus petitions, which allow prisoners to try repeatedly to get their convictions thrown out on constitutional grounds. Both recommendations, along with bail reform, have drawn heavy fire from civil libertarians. "It's a public relations fraud," complains Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "They want to appear to be doing something about crime, but what they're really doing is fooling with the Constitution."

Indeed, Washington is limited in what it can do about crime, since 94% of all offenses fall within the jurisdiction of the states. But with polls showing that, among domestic issues, crime is second only to inflation as a national worry, Republicans and Democrats alike will be flaunting their commitment to law and order on Capitol Hill this fall. The Democrats introduced their own package of reforms this summer, and Reagan himself will launch the Administration's war on crime with a major message early this autumn. "People want something done," says Bell. "If politicians don't do it, they're going to be turned out of office."

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