September 6, 1968
Page 26027
COMPREHENSIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PLANNING – A NEW CHALLENGE
HON. FRED R. HARRIS OF OKLAHOMA IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES Friday, September 6, 1968
Mr. HARRIS. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Maine [Mr. MUSKIE] is necessarily absent today. On his behalf, I ask unanimous consent that a statement prepared by him and an article entitled "Comprehensive Criminal Justice Planning – A New Challenge," which was published in the July issue of Crime and Delinquency, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the statement and article were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
STATEMENT OF SENATOR MUSKIE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, enactment of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 opened the way for a new and more comprehensive approach to the complex problems of law enforcement throughout the nation. It also pointed up the increased national attention and concern being given to the problems of crime and criminal justice in our society.
Mr. Daniel L. Skoler, Deputy Director of the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance at the Department of Justice, has written an article entitled "Comprehensive Criminal Justice Planning – A New Challenge," which appeared in the July issue of Crime and Delinquency. Because of the great relevance of the article, I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Extension of Remarks.
COMPREHENSIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PLANNING – A NEW CHALLENGE
(By Daniel L. Skoler, Deputy Director, Office of Law Enforcement Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice; associate director, Joint Committee for Effective Administration of Justice, American Bar Association, 1961-62; executive director, National Council of Juvenile Court Judges, 1962-65; LL.B., 1952, Harvard Law School)
(NOTE.-This article is based on remarks presented at the Eastern Regional Conference on Criminal Justice Planning, Boston, Mass., March 11-12, 1968. The opinions expressed are the author's and not necessarily the position of the Department of Justice.)
Under new federal legislation, the development of comprehensive criminal justice plans will be a prerequisite for receipt of federal matching grants to strengthen state and local crime-control capabilities. This will be a difficult task in a national structure administered by a variety of disciplines, by numerous and often overlapping political jurisdictions, and with distinct subsystems for processing juvenile and adult offenders. The current status of criminal justice planning offers some guides, promising new instrumentalities, and the experience of federally financed planning in other fields to assist in the effort. However, few models of comprehensive criminal justice planning are available. A concerted program of technical assistance through training workshops, planning materials, and clearing-house and consultation services will be needed if the nation is to meet this challenge successfully. Finally, although the exact requirements of criminal justice planning will be determined by the final anti-crime enactment, some basic requisites are likely to appear under any legislative formula.
These include (1) a view of planning as a continuing process, (2) a bias toward the detail necessary to translate general improvement standards into solutions workable for a given jurisdiction, (3) serious attention to all facets of criminal administration and a strong burden of justification for ignoring any, (4) a recognition in federal planning standards of the time needed to evolve and refine quality plans, (5) the establishment of planning machinery which involves all necessary competencies and is representative of all criminal justice interests, (6) well- designed and orderly programing for the planning mission, both in relation to long-term plans and annual action programs, and (7) the incorporation of explicit, quantified program goals and evaluative mechanisms capable of measuring their achievement.
All indications are that 1968 will be the year in which federal aid to law enforcement and criminal justice will join federal aid to education, health, highway safety, public welfare, and similar subjects of social concern as a major program in support of services administered at state and local government levels.
National interest in the crime and delinquency problem has reached new peaks, pilot programs have probed approaches of federal aid in this area, and a searching President's Commission study has identified major avenues for improving crime control and criminal administration capabilities.
Legislative blueprints for the new federal program were introduced in 1967 and are now in the final stages of congressional consideration. Briefly, they provide funds for development of comprehensive improvement plans; offer annual matching grants to help implement the programs, projects, and goals established in such plans; and permit special support for education and training and for research, development, and demonstration programs designed to produce or test new knowledge and techniques for the criminal administration community.
A basic principle and mandate under all versions of the anti-crime legislation now pending is that state and local governments must develop and maintain comprehensive improvement plans – that is, the plans must consider all aspects of criminal administration: law enforcement, correction, courts and prosecution, citizen action, crime prevention. They must also integrate, to the greatest extent possible, the work of all agencies and levels of government carrying law enforcement and criminal justice responsibilities in the planning jurisdictions.
When the new federal aid partnership becomes law, the states and communities of the nation will be obliged to undertake a collective planning effort of a scope and depth unknown to our institutions of criminal justice administration. The impact of this will be felt by correctional administrators, police commissioners, judicial structures, state budget agencies, and others as they are asked to work on plan components, analyses, and data-gathering efforts. The perspectives and understanding by all concerned must be sufficient to produce the most useful and effective programs possible.
This article will seek to explore the role of comprehensive planning, its current status in the federal aid and criminal justice contexts, and possible issues and requirements likely to be considered as the concept is defined under the coming grant-in-aid program. The precise standards and formats to be developed will depend on the legislation ultimately approved. They will undoubtedly undergo evaluation and refinement as experience is accumulated under that legislation and initial planning efforts help reveal what can realistically be achieved and which approaches to planning offer most promise for the crime-reduction goals of the program.
PLANNING AS A PREREQUISITE FOR ASSISTANCE
The experience of past years has amply demonstrated that the mere infusion of even a vast amount of federal money is no assurance of success or effective action. Welldefined objectives, realistic goals, appropriate techniques, proper allocation of resources, and careful study and program design are requisites for assuring prudent use of public funds and for guaranteeing, in an increasingly complex age, that the desired results will be achieved.
Accordingly, federally financed planning has become a basic tenet of national aid policy, and virtually every important program launched in recent years has included a planning requirement as a condition of eligibility for large-scale aid. The Highway Safety Act of 1966 requires approved "highway safety programs"; the Comprehensive Health Planning and Public Health Services Amendments of 1966 requires approved plans for "comprehensive state health planning"; the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 requires approved plans for "comprehensive city demonstration programs"; the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 requires "comprehensive statewide outdoor recreation plans"; and even more modest efforts, such as the Technical Services Act of 1965 (programs to communicate technical and scientific data for use of commerce and industry) and the Older Americans Act of 1965 (programs for the aging) begin with planning grants as a condition of aid for action projects.
Recognizing that programs such as crime control embody at least the order of complexity that has launched a "generation of planners" in these other areas of public activity, Attorney General Ramsey Clark noted at the 1967 National Conference on Crime Control–
"Our purpose is to commit ourselves to excellence as we now see it and later refine it. This will require definitive planning coordinated with all relevant agencies. Out time, our numbers, the complexity of our lives compel planning."
Similarly, the President's Crime Commission accorded priority to planning as a first step for criminal justice improvement:
"A state or local government that undertakes to improve its criminal administration should begin by constructing, if it has not already done so, formal machinery for planning. Significant reform is not to be achieved overnight by a stroke of a pen; it is the product of thought and preparation.
No experienced and responsible state or city official needs to be told that. The Commission's point is not the elementary one that each individual action against crime should be planned, but that all of a state's or a city's actions against crime should be planned together, by a single body. The police, the courts, the correctional system and the noncriminal agencies of the community must plan their actions against crime jointly if they are to make real headway."
The Commission caveat has been embraced in the pending legislative proposals for law enforcement aid and has attracted little opposition from federal legislators. However, planning in criminal justice, as in other social problem spheres, must deal with important constraints. These include the "state of the art," available resources, intergovernmental complications. and the demands of the "comprehensive planning" mandate.
CURRENT STATUS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE PLANNING
Today, the nation has almost no validated models of good comprehensive planning in crime control. It confronts its mission, however, with (1) a variety of personnel, operational and performance standards, and codes of good practice, and (2) some models of good survey work in specific segments of criminal justice activity – both largely the work of responsible professional groups supported, in varying measure and at different times, by academic and public agency competencies. Guides such as the American Correctional Association's Manual of Correctional Standards, the American Bar Association's new Minimum Criminal Justice Standards, the U.S. Children's Bureau's Standards for Courts Dealing with Children, and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency's model legislation and other publications are available to aid planners as they assess local needs and frame action plans. Similarly, recent state correctional system surveys by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (in Oregon and Indiana) and a variety of metropolitan and municipal police agency studies by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (in Baltimore, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere) offer valuable models of the level of analysis, comprehensiveness, and detailed action programing that might be expected in the correctional and police components of a comprehensive criminal justice plan.
The best of this body of accumulated professional experience, standards, and reform goals has been integrated into the report volumes of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, which has added important new insights and improvement measures.
This is all to the good. However, translating standards and precepts into well-designed and properly phased programs responsive to the conditions and circumstances of particular state and local governments is the largely uncharted course which intelligent federal assistance must nurture.
Much remains to be done to develop resources. State and local planners in criminal justice are in short supply. Organizations currently capable of providing study and survey services have inadequate capacity to meet the demands of the national planning effort contemplated by the proposed legislation. Although they are beginning to show interest in criminal justice work, firms and organizations with general systems analysis, operations research, and organizational development capabilities have relatively little experience with and knowledge of the field.
Planning and research units in correctional, police, and other criminal justice agencies are, for the most part, in early evolution. General criminal justice planning and coordination units, new on the scene, offer promising potential but are still few in number and have not had enough experience to offer the required levels of guidance and leadership.
A further complication confronting comprehensive planning is the fractionalization of responsibility for police, court, and correctional activities on the local level. With important exceptions, states and counties remain dominant in operation of correctional institutions, counties and municipalities have prime responsibility for police activities, and states and counties shoulder the major load in operation of court and prosecution systems. In a given metropolitan area, all three levels of government may play important roles in the police, court, and correctional services provided to residents. Planning must therefore transcend jurisdictional boundaries and individual agency responsibilities, a difficult task under the best of circumstances.
BUILDING PLANNING COMPETENCE
Such problems, large as they may seem. are not greatly different from those facing intergovernmental partnerships which address other contemporary needs. Many responses are possible. A particularly important one is the opportunity presented to the federal government to match grant funds with an aggressive technical assistance program aimed at building planning competence. This could include national workshops for training of criminal justice planners, development of materials and guides for planning, provision of consultant services to planners, and development and dissemination of successful planning models. This kind of help has frequently been neglected in other federally stimulated mass planning programs, often to the detriment of program quality.
Federal assistance of this type will undoubtedly have to draw on the capabilities of universities, leading crime control agencies, professional associations, and qualified consulting organizations.
Federal agencies have themselves no superior wisdom or store of resources for this purpose, although encouraging progress is being made through such instrumentalities as the Bureau of Prisons' new Community Services Division, which was established expressly to provide technical assistance and consulting services to state and local correctional agencies. However, because of its national perspective and grant dollar stewardship, the federal government is uniquely situated to marshal qualified resources, often in short supply, and deploy them to maximum advantage. It is important to recognize, moreover, that the "technical assistance" role is as appropriate and proper to the federal-state-local partnership as the grant-in-aid technique. Because of its advisory nature, it is consistent with the trend toward greater local autonomy in defining problems and mapping programs of action and yet meets a need particularly important at the starting juncture of the crime-control planning effort.
Through other federal help, all states and major localities are today developing technologists and permanent planning agencies whose skills, blended with those of criminal justice specialists, can provide a valuable resource for crime-control planning. These include the forty-four state planning agencies and more than two hundred regional planning agencies and metropolitan councils of government supported by urban planning grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (an investment aggregating nearly $80 million over the past ten years) and, more recently, the core-city planning bodies to map comprehensive neighborhood improvement schemes under the Model Cities Program.
Within the past three years nearly thirty states, assisted by Department of Justice pilot grant funds, have established special commissions, councils, or committees to examine criminal justice needs and map comprehensive programs for improved criminal justice administration. An increasing number of cities and other local units are taking similar action, even before the advent of federal subsidies to assist in such efforts. For the most part, the staffs of these units are too small, their resources too modest, and their origins too recent to permit substantial progress toward complete models of comprehensive plans. However, as they build strength and get their bearings, these specialized state and local criminal justice planning agencies should be able to demonstrate increasing effectiveness and themselves assume major roles in providing technical assistance for coordinated criminal justice planning. Thus, experienced state criminal justice planning agencies might well assume a major part of the training, consulting, and guidance services which initially will require federal impetus.
THE SHAPE OF COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING
Despite the newness of the comprehensive planning concept in crime and delinquency control, we can discern the directions indicated by limited past experience, the lessons of planning efforts in other social problem areas, and the results the new federal aid partnership hopes to achieve.
How much
Planning is a continuing process; any program for effective plan development must recognize that fact. Although the production of a comprehensive written plan is contemplated as a condition of aid eligibility under all versions of the anticrime legislation now under consideration, it must be recognized that planning efforts cannot stop with achievement of a jurisdiction's initially approved "comprehensive plan." Indeed, it is a virtual certainty that this first-year plan will be rudimentary in relation to the fully delineated and refined plan achievable over, say, the five-year initial operating period contemplated for the new legislation.
Accordingly, all planning authorizations anticipate federal support not merely for the initial preparation of a plan, but also for its modification, revision, and expansion. Planning agencies should expect increasingly demanding standards of quality and thoroughness as time and experience provide the opportunity for the research, care, and detail which may not be possible in meeting initial plan deadlines.
How detailed
A dominant purpose of comprehensive criminal justice planning is to permit jurisdictions to select, adapt, and apply general measures and concepts of improvement to the context and needs of a particular state, city, or metropolitan area. This being the case, the most thorough analysis and detailed planning possible, within realistic constraints of time, money, and the need for action, would seem desirable. It will be easy enough for a jurisdiction to echo general standards, tenets, and goals of improved operation in planning documents. These abound in the report volumes of the President's Crime Commission and in the "standards of good practice" which each of the disciplines has developed through its professional and research arms. More difficult will be the tailoring of these to the resources and special problems of the jurisdiction so that maximum prospects for success will be assured and, before that, ascertainment of which measures are valid for that jurisdiction. A high level of detail will help lay bare deficiencies, inadequate assumptions, faulty data, and feasibility of implementation. What must be watched in the process of detailing is the introduction of detail at the proper stage of planning. The comprehensive plan that determines a need for a new facility may not need to produce a detailed design of that facility in the long-range program, but jurisdictions should be prepared to delineate and justify in much greater detail the action program to be undertaken with their fund allocations for a program year.
How comprehensive
A comprehensive plan must cover all aspects of criminal administration. This means that police, correction, prosecution, and court services should each receive attention, that all major phases of their operations should be examined, and that the work of all agencies carrying responsibility in a particular jurisdiction should be accounted for. It probably means further that the need for citizen action, crime prevention efforts of other governmental agencies and private groups, and reform undertakings having no significant "money" dimension (e.g., criminal code revision) also be reviewed and, where appropriate, planned for. This will be a complex task and dilemmas are bound to arise.
For instance, what if a significant law enforcement agency (e.g., the state police) operating in the planning jurisdiction is not under the authority of that jurisdiction; and what if the planning jurisdiction feels that intensive upgrading of a particular function (e.g., police) should be pursued to the substantial exclusion of other criminal justice operations (e.g., courts and correction)?
These conditions could create serious imbalances in plans which, before extension of plan approval, should carry a heavy burden of justification to show, in one case, that efforts would be integrated with those of the nonsupervised agency or, in the other, that the priority is reasonable and justified in the light of local progress and needs.
How soon
The deadlines for comprehensive planning can have a critical effect on the quality of that planning. At present. it appears that plans will have to be produced before the end of the first year in which the new grant-in-aid program becomes operative to permit a jurisdiction to qualify for its share of action funds appropriated for that year. This is because action fund requests must be based on previously submitted plans which have been approved as complying with statutory standards. This could create unfortunate pressures. Notwithstanding opinion that a number of jurisdictions are well advanced in developing comprehensive state and local plans, no such plans are yet on the scene and many jurisdictions will be hard pressed to develop the data and to conduct the studies they require, distill these into an accurate profile of existing resources and needs, prepare a comprehensive master plan, and reconcile opposing viewpoints along the way, all within the first fiscal year of federally supported planning operations. The experience of the existing state planning committees suggests that we may be underestimating the time needed for such work, including time to organize and properly staff a new planning operation.
Three types of remedial measures for such deadline problems have been accorded recognition in different versions of the anti-crime legislation:
1. Permitting a jurisdiction's first-year action funds to be carried over to another fiscal year so that they will not be forfeited if the plan takes longer to develop than anticipated (utilized also in the Urban Mass Transportation Grant Program).
2. Permitting the jurisdiction to apply for first-year action funds without first submitting a plan, thereby enabling a more deliberate pace in plan development (utilized also in the Highway Safety Aid Program).
3. Accepting an "interim plan," admittedly incomplete in scope and quality, as a basis for release of first-year funds but not as a substitute for the detailed, comprehensive plan which will ultimately be required (utilized also in the Outdoor Recreation Grants-In-Aid Program).
What machinery
The machinery that a state or local jurisdiction establishes for comprehensive planning can measurably affect the success of the planning effort. It is important, first, that planning groups have strong commissions, committees, or advisory boards to help review and establish programs and priorities. This is especially critical where the planning program encompasses more than one kind of jurisdiction and addresses multiple criminal justice fields (police, courts, and correction).
Board representation of all interests, including not only operating agencies but research and educational resources, should be welded into a structure suited to the planning jurisdiction's needs and political structure. A number of "commission-subcommittee-advisory group" mixes are possible; the determination of the mix should be left to local initiative.
Equally important are strong planning staffs with capabilities spanning all criminal justice specialties. These will be needed even where substantial elements of planning are delegated to concerned operating agencies. Without this staff capability, the integration of plan components and the necessary attention to total system performance required by comprehensive planning may be put in jeopardy. Planning machinery must also fix ultimate responsibility in a single unit of state or local government enjoying support of the chief executive and the jurisdiction's legislative authorities. Such a unit can be effectively housed in a variety of structures – in an independent agency or in an office within an existing state department (for example, the attorney general's office or a public safety unit) – so long as the responsibility is pinpointed and the necessary staff capability provided.
The quality of planning machinery not only will have a critical effect on the planning process but also will be an important determinant of plan implementation. Appropriating necessary local funds, securing cooperation of criminal justice agencies in carrying out the plan, and accepting plan priorities should prove as large a task for the planning agency as formulating the plan.
Steps in planning
The planning process must itself be an orderly development. After the first steps of organization and staff, it would normally involve (1) design of the planning study, (2) collection of data and conduct of studies and surveys necessary for plan formulation, (3) formulation of the total plan, (4) delineation in detail of components for short-term or immediate implementation, and (5) review and approval of the plan and its priorities. Work on each of these phases can, to some extent, be advanced concurrently and certain studies and efforts can be assigned for future accomplishment as part of the plan scheme. Whatever the case, a well-conceived and specific, albeit flexible, work plan and time sequence should be developed. Stinting in preliminary stage work (e.g., design of the planning effort, data collection and surveys, problem definition) to arrive at final results more quickly could seriously impair the quality of the final plan. To insure against omissions, some federal programs have established requirements for interim submissions which delineate such components as problem analysis, general goals, and program strategies to be used in plan formulation.
Goals and evaluation
Well-defined long- and short-range targets are, of course, essential to a meaningful improvement effort. Equally essential is a system for evaluation of progress in attaining the goals, and this should be an integral component of the plan. As with other endeavors in social measurement in our dynamic and changing society, evaluation of the crime-control effectiveness of improvement plans will be a difficult undertaking. Validation may be slow in coming until programs have a chance to take hold and we can factor out variables that obscure the picture. Federal guidance will probably be needed to define expectations and provide a common measurement base to which state and local jurisdictions can, if they desire, add refinements.
Evaluation should deal with attainment of both "capability" goals (e.g., achieving model casework levels in correctional treatment programs, or securing crime labs or computerized information centers in law enforcement programs) and "performance" goals (e.g., reduction of serious crime, or lowering the recidivism rate, or raising the conviction rate in prosecuted cases).
The objectives should be explicitly stated in quantified terms so that measurement is possible and expectations can be tested and adjusted against the realities of actual program experience. Cost analysis should be built into evaluation efforts wherever possible because costs are important determinants not only of what can be attempted but of the comparative value of alternative solutions or techniques.
Movement in this direction can be seen in other programs. The Model Cities Program is asking planning grantees to define both one-year and five-year performance goals in quantitative terms (e.g., specified percentages of reduction in personal assault rates, in infant mortality differentials, in low rental housing deficiencies, etc., toward levels normal for the total city) and is providing guidance on how progress toward these should be measured. Something comparable should be fashioned for anti-crime programs, supported by adequately defined and nationally conducted collection of statistical data.
As the criminal justice community moves toward large-scale planning. it is important to keep in mind that the technique must serve and not dominate our crime control efforts. Some aid programs have had their disappointments with planning efforts; some are searching for more effective applications – none appears to have developed clearly superior or error-free approaches.
We hope that our commitment to planning will feed on critical examination as well as intelligent adherence to the formulas and formats which emerge and that sufficient flexibility will be maintained by those administering the program to permit the fullest expression of state and local creativity. The attorney general cautioned a group of criminal justice planners in 1966 that "the vital purpose of reform is action, not abstraction." Planning is action and should be seen in that light. Properly executed and utilized, it can prove to be one of our most effective tools in the cause of criminal justice reform.