Law - Criminal Short assignment

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CCJ 4938: Crime Prevention

Professor Steven Zane, Ph.D., J.D.

HISTORY OF CRIME CONTROL AND CRIME PREVENTION

Early history of crime control • Lex talionis (1900 BC) – Retributive punishment = “an eye for an eye”

• Formal systems of crime control largely nonexistent prior to modern era – Military kept order – State would punish certain high crimes

• Crime control was local – Members of public community largely responsible for crime

control and punishment • Religious institutions provided moral discipline for “misdemeanors”

– Forms of citizen “self-help” evolved over time 3

Premodern crime control • Obligatory policing (~1066 AD) in England

– Male citizens had formal obligation to band together in groups and police themselves

• “Watch and ward” systems (~1285 AD) – Rotated responsibility for keeping watch over town, village, or

other area • “Hue and cry”

– Men rotate watching over town at night, raising alarm if threat identified • “Assize of arms”

– All freemen required to have weapons available to assist if needed • Constable

– Unpaid position to organize “watch and ward” systems » Not a patrolman, usually investigate complaints if victim could pay

• “Vigilante movements” arose on frontiers (e.g., United States) – A group of men—a “posse”—would be organized when an offender needed to be

apprehended and punished 4

Early organized approaches • Early paid private police forces

– Parochial police forces hired to protect homes and property of wealthy • Often involved private polices forces for industries, e.g.,

– Merchant Police of England (16th century) established to protect the wool industry – Thames River Police established in 1798 by West Indian merchants in response to dockland

crime (i.e., thefts from ships and warehouses)

• “Thief takers” – Professional bounty hunters also emerged

• E.g., Highwayman Act of 1692 (England)

• Early detectives – Bow Street Runners (1749–1839) were private detectives

who would investigate and detect crimes • Private, but paid by (and attached to) local magistrate 5

Modern policing • Early attempts in 17th–18th century – Often militarized patrols staffed by ex-soldiers

• Prussian royal police officers emerged in 1750s, Viennese police officers created in 1753 • The Lieutenant Général de Police de Paris (1667) managed a semi-militarized city guard to patrol the city

– By 1791, the Gendarmerie Nationale patrolled provincial and rural communities as well

• Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 – Established the first professional state-organized police force

(in London), funded through local taxes • Hierarchical command structure: superintendents, inspectors, sergeants

– Unlike patrols in Europe, not military (sometimes even unarmed) • Focus was on prevention of crime through systematic patrolling

– Evolution of watchmen system (“old police”) to patrol beats (“new police”)

• By early 20th century, government-organized police forces became the norm in large, urban centers

CRIME PREVENTION IN THE 20TH CENTURY

EARLY CRIME PREVENTION

Juvenile court (1899) • Guided by a parens patriae philosophy

– Parens patriae = “father of the country” • English common law doctrine that the King is the supreme ruler and guardian over his people

– Jurisdiction over delinquency, dependency, and status offenses • Status offenses are non-crimes such as smoking, curfew violation, incorrigibility, and truancy

• Juvenile courts were premised on the idea that they could treat juvenile delinquents by attending to the causes of their delinquency – Here we see the idea of preventing crime before it occurred

• Poverty, lack of education, and poor parenting among lower classes seen as major causes of juvenile crime

• Juvenile courts were influenced by positivist criminology, a scientific approach to studying crime being caused by identifiable factors (i.e., determinism) – In late 19th century, list of possible factors included:

• Low IQ (“feeblemindedness”) • Low self-control (“moral intemperance”) • Poverty • Unemployment • Lack of education 9

Chicago Area Project (1931) • First documented initiative in the United States that

measured crime prevention – Implemented by sociologists Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay at

the University of Chicago • Established “social disorganization” theory

• Early community project aimed at preventing crime caused by social disorganization – Sought to improve sense of pride and community in socially

disorganized neighborhoods in Chicago suffering from high delinquency rates and gang activity • Included >20 programs developed for youth

– e.g., counseling, hobby groups, school activities, recreation

– Unclear whether it was effective, but it marks the beginning of the modern era of crime prevention 10

Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (1939) • First delinquency prevention experiment

– Created by Richard C. Cabot, Harvard professor of clinical medicine and social ethics

– “Friendly mentoring” by adult role models

• 650 boys (average age = 10) placed in 325 matched pairs and randomly allocated to experimental or control group – Experimental group boys received monthly visits from counselors who

acted as positive role models • Counselors talked to the boys, took them on trips and to recreational activities, tutored

them in reading and arithmetic, encouraged them to participate in the YMCA and summer camps, played games with them at the project’s center, encouraged them to attend church, and visited their families to give advice and general support

– Lasted 1939–1945 11

Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (1939) • Follow-ups revealed null effects (in 1949) and iatrogenic

effects (in 1978) – Why did it fail?

• Many competing hypotheses – Theory failure = mentoring not effective – Implementation failure = intervention not well focused

» Deviancy training hypothesis = deviant peers bonded during summer camps

– Without rigorous scientific design, these negative intervention effects would not have been discovered • In later interviews, treatment group men reported that the

program had helped them 12

FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR CRIME PREVENTION

Federal funding • Federal funding for delinquency prevention began

in the 1950s with Eisenhower administration

• Early programs based on social structure theories, aimed at community-level prevention – E.g., NYC-based Mobilization for Youth (MOBY)

• Integrated approach to community development, based on Cloward & Olsen (1960) different opportunity theory – Funding began in 1961 under Kennedy administration

– E.g., Head Start • National preschool program begun in 1965 under Johnson

administration 14

Presidential commissions of 1960s • President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice produced

report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967) – “Many Americans think controlling crime is solely the task of the police, the courts, and corrections

agencies. In fact, as the Commission’s report makes clear, crime cannot be controlled without the interest and participation of schools, businesses, social agencies, private groups and individual citizens.”

• National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1969) – Established task forces on how best to prevent crime and violence – Major conclusion was that host of criminogenic risk factors “pulled” toward crime:

• “To be a young, poor male; to be undereducated and without means of escape from an oppressive urban environment; to want what the society claims is available (but mostly to others); to see around oneself illegitimate and often violent methods being used to achieve material success; and to observe others using these means with impunity – all this is to be burdened with an enormous set of influences that pull many toward crime and delinquency.”

• National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals (1973) – Funded with $1.75 million, first formulations of national criminal justice standards and goals for crime

reduction and prevention at the State and local level – Issued six reports with “best practices” authored by task forces on major topics, building on prior

reports • (1) A National Strategy to Reduce Crime • (2) Criminal Justice System • (3) Police • (4) Courts • (5) Corrections • (6) Community Crime Prevention

“Tough on crime” era • Crime began to rise during 1960s, and continued

to rise dramatically through 1990s – Research on crime control efforts by the CJ system generally

showed little effect – Martinson (1974) report concluded that “nothing works” in prison

rehabilitation

– Growing prison population not accompanied by reductions in crime and violence

• Overt politicization of crime in the 1980s – Political suicide to be perceived as “soft on crime”

– Crime prevention (as opposed to punishment) became seen as “soft”

Violent crime trends (UCR)

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1962 1967 1972 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2012 2017 2019

Violent index crimes (per 100K)

Property crime trends (UCR)

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1962 1967 1972 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2012 2017 2019

Property index crimes (per 100K)

Violent crime trends (NCVS)

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018

Personal victimizations (per1000)

Property crime trends (NCVS)

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400

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018

Household victimizations (per 1000)

The 1994 crime bill • Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of

1994 – Passed under Clinton administration, largely written by Senator Joe

Biden (Delaware)

• Largest crime bill in US history – Provided $10.8 billion funding for 100K new state and local

police officers, $9.7 billion for new prisons, $2.6 billion for FBI/DEA, and $6.1 billion for prevention programs

• Prevention funding was controversial – Created a rift between crime control—“tough on crime”—and crime

prevention—“soft on crime” • E.g., preventing juvenile delinquency through “midnight basketball”

became a running joke

Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising (1997)

• Report commissioned by Congress to evaluate more than 500 crime prevention programs – > $4 billion of federal funding spend on the evaluated

programs • “The Preventing Crime report and its subsequent public and scholarly

attention served to . . . shift the debate away from the perception that support for crime prevention is tantamount to being soft on crime . . . . – “The report put the focus squarely on what scientific evidence had to say about

effectiveness. It made no room for moralizing about crime or politicizing what works or does not work; it sought to make the facts – arrived at by scrupulous evaluation – the centerpiece of the policy-making process.” (Welsh & Pfeffer, 2013, p. 546)

Evidence-based crime prevention • The 21st century has seen growing interest in an

evidence-based approach to crime policy – Embraces prevention science’s commitment to the use of the

most scientifically valid methods to evaluate programs • “What it adds is the utilization of accumulated research

evidence on effectiveness. It seeks to increase the influence of research on policy or, in a manner of speaking, put systematic research evidence at center stage in the policy- making process” (Welsh & Pfeffer, 2013, p. 545)