Modern Criminal Justice

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Modern Criminal Justice

In early 1929 newly elected Herbert Hoover (1874–1964; served 1929–33) became the first U.S. president to mention crime as a major issue in his inauguration speech. A crime wave caused by bootleggers (persons who illegally made and sold alcohol) and gangsters swept America in the 1920s, thanks in large part to the introduction of Prohibition. Prohibition made it illegal to make, sell, or possess alcoholic beverages, which created a huge demand for obtaining and producing it illegally.

Respect for the criminal justice system, consisting of police, courts, and prisons, greatly declined as the public and criminals dodged the alcohol ban in every way possible. Law enforcement seemed very unskilled in enforcing the new law. As the crime spree continued through the decade, it became more violent and improvements in law enforcement gained greater public support.

From the 1930s into the twenty-first century, the federal government played an active role in criminal justice. Still, the states shouldered most criminal justice responsibility for the major crimes of murder, armed robbery, rape, theft, larceny, and arson. As crime rates rose in the twentieth century, the federal government increased funding for local and state law enforcement, set national crime policy, and kept national statistics. Crime concerns dramatically grew as society changed and new technologies were introduced through the twentieth century.

Criminal justice prior to the 1930s

Throughout the nineteenth century, criminal justice was overwhelmingly the responsibility of states, not the federal government. Before the era of automobiles and airplanes, travel across state lines was limited and slow. State jurisdictions (geographic areas over which states have legal authority) functioned well since few criminals crossed state lines. The federal government's responsibilities were restricted to a limited number of identified crimes, such as treason (seeking to overthrow the government), perjury (making false statements under oath) in a federal court, forgery (making a copy for illegal purpose) of federal documents, illegal immigration (foreign citizens coming into the country), smuggling (secretly bringing something into the country against the law), and violations of federal business regulations.

Federal police enforcement was limited to the District of Columbia, U.S. territories that had not become states, national parks and U.S. military posts, and the high seas. From 1888 to 1889 federal district courts heard fewer than fifteen thousand cases, a very small number compared to criminal cases heard before state and local courts.

Given the limited involvement of the federal government in criminal justice, no federal prisons existed before the 1890s and U.S. marshals handled mostly federal policing responsibilities. Those convicted of federal crimes were sent to state or local jails. In 1891 three federal prisons were approved by Congress. As a result, Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas opened in 1895 followed by facilities in Atlanta and western Washington. The policing powers of the federal government began growing as well. In 1908 the U.S. Department of Justice created the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) to lead in the investigation of federal crimes. It consisted at first of only eight unarmed agents.

In the early twentieth century, federal justice responsibilities expanded to include various types of activities from tax fraud (to deceive another for illegal gain) to criminal activity that crossed state lines. Tax fraud became an issue when federal income tax was introduced in 1913. Criminal activity that crossed state lines usually consisted of a violation of the Mann Act of 1910, which prohibited taking women across state lines to engage in prostitution (selling sexual services for pay) or violation of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act of 1919, which made it a federal crime to take a stolen vehicle across state lines.

Following World War I (1914–18; war in which Great Britain, France, the United States, and their allies defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their allies) federal concern turned to the control of suspects who engaged in political actions considered dangerous by the government. These activists were called radicals. The Red Scare (a time of extreme fear of communist influence) brought passage of the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. The acts sought to control aliens (immigrants who held citizenship in foreign countries) and political groups such as anarchists (those who wished to overthrow the government). The Justice Department carried out a series of raids, known as the Palmer Raids, on suspected foreign radicals in 1919 and 1920. U.S. attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer (1872–1936) placed a young man named J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972) in charge of organizing the raids. Hoover would go on to be the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

During the 1920s, Prohibition dramatically increased criminal activities, which not only violated federal laws but state laws as well. Some 22,000 liquor cases were brought before the courts in one twelve month period in the early 1920s. Organized crime (people or groups united to profit from crime) grew tremendously as it supplied thirsty Americans with alcohol. In combating liquor violations, police expanded their use of wiretapping (tapping telephones) and more aggressive search and seizure measures. The rising number of convictions created the need for more prisons. In the mid-1920s the federal government added more prisons, including the first federal women's prison, the Federal Industrial Institution for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, in 1927.

By the late 1920s the criminal justice system at federal, state, and local levels was in need of better coordination and increased professionalism. The task of fighting crime had outgrown the local police and court systems. It was clearly time for expansion and modernization.

Modernizing criminal justice

Concerns over the rising crime rate led to the need for more accurate information on growing crime trends. In late 1929 the Bureau of Investigation began the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The UCR provided nationwide statistics on seven key crimes—murder and manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny (theft of property), burglary, and motor vehicle theft. In 1979 arson was added. The UCR became the most used criminal statistics source in the nation into the twenty-first century.

In 1929 President Herbert Hoover created the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, chaired by U.S. Attorney General George Wickersham (1858–1936). Known as the Wickersham Commission, the group was charged with evaluating the criminal justice system, including police behavior, the condition of prisons, and the causes of crime. Issued in 1931, the findings of the fourteen commission reports did not support the existing system.

The commission found many of the police departments in the nation were corrupt, poorly operated, and poorly trained. The report also criticized the newly expanded prison system for not trying hard enough to rehabilitate or help its inmates. The reports provided specific recommendations on how to improve criminal justice in America, some of which were gradually adopted.

J. Edgar Hoover, hired by the BOI in 1917, became its director in 1924. Hoover, along with others including Los Angeles police chief August Vollmer (1876–1955), responded to the call for greater professionalism in law enforcement. At the federal level, Hoover turned the BOI into a highly trained law enforcement organization. He established the first fingerprint database and changed the name from BOI to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935.

As time passed, Congress gave the FBI more responsibility for fighting crime. After Prohibition ended in 1933 and it was no longer illegal to make or sell alcohol, crime groups switched
to gambling, extortion (to take money or property through threats or bodily harm), and vice (prostitution). In addition, fear of radical politics began to capture the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) as World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan) drew near in the late 1930s. He assigned J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to monitor rebellious activity in the United States.

Hoover dominated the world of federal crime law enforcement through his forty-eight years of leadership until his death in 1972. Throughout the twentieth century, the FBI remained at the forefront of technological innovations, including forensic science, fingerprinting, and blood work analysis.

At the local level, August Vollmer, the police chief of Los Angeles, contributed a great deal to the advancement of law enforcement. In Los Angeles in 1923, Vollmer established a modern crime laboratory. He introduced the use of patrol cars, motorcycles, and bicycles for patrol officers. Vollmer set up fingerprint and handwriting systems and a way of filing information about how crimes were committed. Innovative and visionary, Vollmer created a police school where criminology, the study of criminal behavior, was taught. Following Vollmer's lead, police departments nationwide improved training, introduced new technologies, and developed new investigative procedures.

Further expansion of federal criminal justice

Two major factors made the growth of federal criminal justice an absolute necessity: the increased use of automobiles and commercial airlines by both the public and criminals. It was now easy to cross state boundaries. While planes, trains, and automobiles flowed freely across state lines, state law enforcement did not. By the 1930s interstate crime had become a key focus of federal responsibility.

Congress passed the Lindbergh Act of 1932 after the kidnapping and murder of the baby son of American aviator Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974). The act made it a federal crime to take people across state lines against their will. The person arrested and charged with the Lindbergh crime, Bruno Hauptmann, was convicted and executed.

During the Great Depression (1929–41), a period of severe economic hardship in the United States and much of the world, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, a collection of federal programs designed to provide jobs and bring economic relief to those most affected by the hard times. As a result, federal government grew dramatically and expanded its power in many areas, including law enforcement.

In 1933 it became a federal crime to flee across state lines to avoid arrest or to avoid testimony in criminal court cases. Congress passed laws establishing more actions as federal crimes in 1934. These included robbing a national bank,
extortion using telephones or telegraphs (to send fast messages called telegrams), and taking stolen goods worth more than $5,000 across state lines.

A growing prison population

With more criminal laws and improved policing, prison populations grew as well. Since the states were primarily responsible for criminal justice, most people convicted of crimes during the twentieth century were held in state prisons. In 1910 there were almost 67,000 prisoners in state prisons; in 1940 this figure rose to over 146,000. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics produced by the U.S. Department of Justice, prison populations began to swell again by 1980 as longer sentences, often mandatory sentences set by state and federal law, were handed out by courts. In 1980 before the government's war on drugs began, there were over 503,000 inmates in state and federal prisons and local jails. By 2002, sixteen years after the war on drugs began, that figure rose to just over two million. New prisons were built to hold the growing population of inmates; in 1998 and 1999 alone 162 new prisons were under construction while another 675 facilities were remodeled. By 2001 daily operating expenses for state prisons reached $38 billion a year.

In an effort to lower prison expenses in the 1980s and 1990s, states began using outside companies to provide prison services. By the early twenty-first century private prisons (those not owned by the state) were operating in about thirty states, primarily in the South and West. Other facilities previously run by state agencies, such as drug treatment centers and halfway houses (residences where individuals can readjust to life after being released from prison), were also being operated by private companies.

In addition to state prisons, a dramatic growth in the number of federal inmates took place as well. In 1915, before Prohibition, there were only three thousand federal prisoners. By 1930, after a decade of Prohibition, there were thirteen thousand prisoners. To cope with the growing number of federal prisoners, Congress created the Bureau of Federal Prisons in 1930 and the bureau quickly added facilities, including Alcatraz in San Francisco, a prison that later became notorious for its harsh treatment of prisoners and reputation of being inescapable. Alcatraz began operation in 1934.

The number of prisoners continued to increase, climbing to twenty thousand in 1940 and twenty-five thousand in 1980 just before President Ronald Reagan's (1911–; served 1981–89) war on drugs that added thousands more. By 1985 the figure rose to almost forty thousand. Over fifty thousand were housed in almost fifty federal facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons by the end of the 1980s.

The U.S. prison population still remained high at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By 2000 two million inmates filled the nation's prisons and jails. Two-thirds were in state and federal prisons; the rest were in local city and county jails. Half of state inmates were convicted of violent crimes while the other half for property, drug, and other crimes. The majority of inmates were minorities, uneducated, and poor. Of industrial nations, the United States was second only to Russia in the percentage of its citizens held in prisons. Even though fewer crimes were being committed, those convicted were facing longer sentences under the harsher sentencing laws.

Treatment or punishment

Through the years the public has shifted back and forth on how to treat adult prison inmates. From 1890 to 1930 prisons put inmates to work manufacturing various items, like military clothing for World War I. Major industrial prisons included Sing Sing in New York, San Quentin in California, and the Illinois State Penitentiary. In the South chain gangs (convicts chained together to do heavy labor outside the prison) worked on public road projects. In addition to jobs, prisons also provided education, use of a prison library, outdoor recreation, and the opportunity to learn various trades.

Businesses located near prisons often complained of unfair competition from prison factories. Labor unions protested that the low wages paid to inmates caused wages outside prison walls to decline as well.

During the economic crash of the Great Depression in the 1930s, prisons decreased certain operations as the demand for goods dropped sharply. Responding to business, labor, and changing economic conditions, Congress passed the Ashurst-Summers Act in 1935 prohibiting the interstate or state-to-state transportation of goods produced in prisons. Most states soon followed and passed similar laws prohibiting the sale of prison-made goods within their states.

During the 1930s prisons focused more on strict discipline and punishment rather than treatment. Violence and riots within the prisons resulted from these harsher conditions. In response the prisons turned back to the Wickersham Commission recommendations. They categorized inmates according to their level of security risk and placed less serious offenders in prison farms and forest camps. They also returned to programs of education and vocational training as well as rehabilitation programs. Focus on treatment more than punishment again became the preferred approach toward inmates. Prisoners began receiving individualized rehabilitation plans.

Before long, prison life changed once more. The rising crime rate through the 1960s and 1970s led again to a "get tough" approach on crime. Treatment approaches ended and tougher prison conditions resulted.

Organized crime

America's fear of organized crime grew in the 1950s. The perception of a giant organization of professional criminals, mostly of Sicilian (from Sicily, Italy) origin and referred to as the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra, captured the nation's attention. Many remembered back to the 1920s Prohibition era when crime syndicates (a group of people who work together in a business activity, legal or illegal) led by well-known criminals such as Al Capone (1899–1947) overwhelmed the criminal justice system.

In 1950 and 1951, U.S. senator Estes Kefauver (1903–1963) of Tennessee chaired a special congressional committee to investigate organized crime in America, including racketeering (obtaining money through illegal activities). Based on limited evidence, the Kefauver Committee claimed rich and powerful crime organizations operated in many U.S. cities. Dramatic media coverage of the Kefauver hearings on organized crime increased public concern. Kefauver even wrote a book, Crime in America (1951), based on the committee's findings.

In response to hearings, the FBI formed a special racketeering unit and began tracking interstate crime groups. Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) made organized crime one of his highest priorities.

In 1967 a presidential task force under President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973; served 1963–69) revealed for the first time the inner workings of organized crime, particularly the Cosa Nostra, which operated an entire network of more than twenty Italian and Sicilian crime families in various U.S. cities. To give law enforcement greater authority to combat organized crime, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), also known as the Organized Crime Control Act, in 1970.

RICO led to the successful prosecutions of Cosa Nostra members in the 1980s and 1990s. Owing to the longstanding public fascination with organized crime kept alive by the The Godfather movie series, the 1992 trial of mobster hit man John Gotti (1940–2002) in New York attracted considerable public attention. While federal authorities were concentrating on mobsters, other organized crime groups grew in wealth and power involving drug trafficking. These organizations were composed of ethnic gangs, largely from Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. (See chapter 7 on organized crime for more information.)

Terrorism

By the 1980s domestic and international terrorism began to capture the public's attention. Ted Kaczynski (1942–), known as the Unabomber, began mailing bombs to selected individuals in 1980, killing and maiming a number of people. He continued off and on for over a decade before he was captured. The nation was stunned in June 1995 when Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) set off a deadly car bomb, destroying a five-story federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 265 men, women, and children.

International terrorism struck American soil in February 1993 with a bombing in the underground parking of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City that killed six and injured some one thousand. The cost of security grew, as did the rise of private police and security businesses.

Terrorism struck a deadlier blow, again at the WTC, on September 11, 2001. Two airliners hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists struck the two high-rise office buildings, bringing them down and killing 2,800 people. Another airliner struck the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., killing over 180. A fourth hijacked airliner crashed in rural Pennsylvania, killing over forty people while on its way to another planned target, most likely the White House or U.S. Capitol Building.

Fear of international terrorism dramatically increased. In reaction to the 2001 attacks, Congress passed the Patriot Act in 2002 and created a new federal department, the Department of Homeland Security. The new department, working with the Department of Justice, pursued security measures to guard against future terrorist crimes. The Justice Department focused on tracking illegal aliens in the United States and monitoring any suspicious activity brought to its attention. (See chapter 10 on terrorism for more information.)

White-collar crime

White-collar crime refers to a person who uses his position of authority and responsibility in an organization, such as a business, to commit crimes of fraud and deceit. Fraud and deceit are intentionally deceiving a person or persons for one's own economic benefit. White-collar crimes can be carried out in most any business ranging from small automobile repair shops to the healthcare industry, financial institutions, and large corporations.

White-collar crime came to the public's attention in the 1980s with the collapse of the savings and loan industry, banks that primarily loaned money for building construction and home ownership. The collapse affected the financial health of millions of Americans. Other high-profile cases followed, including criminal charges against executives of Worldcom, a communications giant, and Enron, a company that controlled the flow of electrical power to customers, and the insider trading case against celebrity Martha Stewart (1941–) in 2004.

Given the national and international standing of the corporations involved, state courts were not those best equipped to deal with white-collar crime. It has become the concern of the Justice Department and the FBI to coordinate numerous organizations nationwide to track business dealings and irregularities. (See chapter 6 on white-collar crime for more information.)

Crime trends

By the mid-1960s following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) violent crime and property crime rates rose to high levels that would carry through the following decade. Police were falling behind. In addition, political crime had become widespread. In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) declared a "war on crime." Congress passed the Law Enforcement Assistance Act (LEAA) that funneled billons of federal dollars to states over the next ten years to fight crime. The federal Crime Commission created by Johnson issued a lengthy report in 1967 warning that crime was greatly affecting the culture and quality of life in the United States. Congress responded with the Crime Control and Safe Streets Act to direct the war on crime.

Since the 1930s local police departments had been fully responsible for the health and safety of their community residents. Since citizens did not really help in community policing, the commission recommended they become more active in protecting themselves, such as installing alarms and improving locks on their properties. Such advice from a presidential commission, however, also served to increase the public's fear of crime. Many people avoided public parks and felt uncomfortable on the streets at night.

To lessen public fear, another national advisory commission in 1973 recommended citizens form local organizations to take a more active part in crime prevention. Such programs as Neighborhood Watch grew out of this idea. Residents banned together to watch for suspicious activities in their neighborhoods and report any activity to police. The earliest focus was on property crime, but this expanded in high crime areas to include drug activity by the late 1980s. By 2000 some fifty million Americans participated in local Neighborhood Watch programs.

By the late 1970s, the American public wanted a tougher approach to crime, including harsher punishment of criminals. This included a renewed interest in the death penalty and fixed or mandatory sentencing in order to not only discourage crime but make sure criminals paid for their crimes. Local commissions, created to study the crime issue in numerous cities and towns, developed new approaches to fighting crime. These included expanding police departments with money provided in part by federal funding.

New Technologies, New Crime, New Challenges

During the 1990s increasingly complex communications became available in businesses and homes. New communications networks provided tools for criminals. The growth of the Internet in particular opened new opportunities for criminal activity and created challenges for the criminal justice system.

The first computer-related criminal law in the United States was the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It targeted people interfering with computers and computer networks. Soon the focus changed to the kinds of information available over the Internet. New high-speed techniques were available for gathering, processing, and distributing information on almost any topic. A major consequence was that personal information about individuals became easily accessible. Controlling how this information was used and who used it proved a big challenge.

Concerns over privacy became of utmost importance. The explosion of available information affected copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Copyright laws allowauthors or artists the right to determine how their creations may be used, including how their works are reproduced, distributed, or performed. Trademark laws allow manufacturers to assign a specific identifying symbol to their products, meaning no other business can use that particular symbol. Patent laws grant inventors exclusive rights to operate, produce, or sell their products. Enforcement of these laws, if violated by using the Internet, has been virtually impossible. For example, songs have been freely copied off Internet sites instead of buying the music, which prevents artists from receiving proper royalties. The government has tried to penalize these criminals with fines but new "share" music and free music download sites that help conceal the identity of the downloader are launched everyday.

Other issues for criminal justice involving the Internet include the sale and distribution of child pornography (photos and films of children engaged in sex acts) and adults luring kids through Internet chat rooms into meetings and often into sexual relations. These criminal activities have crossed state and national boundaries. New technology has enabled criminals to operate where no boundaries exist. In the twenty-first century, the criminal justice system struggles to keep pace as it must continually redefine crime and criminals. (See chapter 11 on cyber crime for more information.)

Approaches to local policing changed through time as well. For example, the 1980s brought a return to police walking their patrols. Police wanted to reconnect with their communities on a much more personal level than they could while riding in patrol cars. Called community policing, police tried to create stronger ties with the public in fighting crime. Mounted police patrols (officers on horseback) became common sights in public areas such as parks.

Through the 1980s crime rates remained high as almost every basic category of serious crime increased. Youth gangs became a major concern, as did a rise in crack cocaine use. Twenty-two out of every 100,000 males, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, died violent deaths in 1987.

In 1990 some 35 million crimes occurred and 2.3 million Americans were victims of violent crime. Fear of violence was a major part of life in the United States affecting millions. This fear was heightened by racial rioting, known as the Rodney King riots, in Los Angeles in 1992. These riots broke out after videotapes of white policemen brutally beating a black man named Rodney King were shown on newscasts across the country.

Gun purchases rose dramatically, and business and home security systems became a very profitable business in the 1990s. Private security firms that provided bodyguards and other security measures, also received many customers. Mace (a chemical spray used to stun criminals) sold briskly and self-defense classes became popular. The widespread use of cell phones in the 1990s was driven, in part, by concerns over crime and personal safety.

Juvenile justice

How to treat juvenile offenders has received considerable attention throughout the twentieth century. Ideas on how to make juvenile justice more effective changed through the decades. Illinois was the first state to separate juveniles from the regular justice system in 1899 when it passed the Juvenile Court Act. Reformers were dismayed that youths charged with crimes were placed in facilities along with hardened adult criminals. The new juvenile system was for youthful offenders under seventeen years of age. In addition, the justice records of juveniles were kept confidential. By 1925 almost all the states had juvenile systems. Although varying slightly from state to state, teen offenders who had turned eighteen were generally transferred to the adult criminal justice system.

In 1947 Congress passed the federal Juvenile Courts Act establishing a more consistent informal process for juveniles among the states. Emphasizing rehabilitation (treatment) over punishment, judges had considerable flexibility in deciding juvenile cases.

Over the next half century, thoughts on the treatment of juveniles in the criminal justice system changed steadily. With rising concern over juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, the public felt the juvenile system was too lenient or relaxed. Some states changed to more adult-like processes.

By the later 1960s the public was less concerned about juvenile crime. In 1972 Congress passed the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act setting out general rules for state juvenile justice systems. States once again kept juveniles separate from adults in jails and prisons, and every juvenile was given a court-appointed guardian. Greater emphasis was also placed on preventing youths from turning to crime.

By 1980 youth gangs and gun violence caught the public's attention. Juveniles were sent in greater numbers to adult courts to face more severe punishment, including the possibility of the death sentence for those over sixteen years of age.

Despite a decline in juvenile crime rates by the mid-1990s, the tougher approach remained. A series of school shootings kept juvenile offenders in the news and fears of crime high. Some states even passed laws making parents legally responsible for their children's criminal acts. In the early twenty-first century, the distinction between the juvenile and adult justice systems remained less than during earlier decades of the twentieth century. (See chapter 19 for more information on juvenile justice.)

A drop in crime, but not fear

During the 1990s the rate of violent crimes decreased significantly. Some claimed community policing, more police officers, and longer prison terms were key factors. Others pointed to the aging population in general and a stronger national economy. Previous studies had shown that most crimes were committed by males between seventeen and thirty-four years of age. By the 1990s, the number of males in this age range was steadily declining. Continuing into the twenty-first century, the homicide rate in the United States, though down from previous years, remained high compared to other industrialized nations. It was seven times greater than Canada and forty times greater than Japan.

Though crime rates declined, people still felt vulnerable. Crime was widely publicized in the media and seemed more random in its victims. Mass or large-scale shootings at schools and businesses as well as terrorist threats made the entire nation feel uneasy. Increased security in public buildings and at airports kept the threat of crime uppermost in people's minds. Despite the changes in criminal justice since the 1920s, citizens have continued to search for the answers to try and eliminate crime or at least to control it.