July 19, 1971
Page 25961
LAW AND ORDER: BEYOND THE CODE WORD,
SUMMARY 1971 – PART I
This is a difficult moment to write about America. In the one hundred and ninety-fifth year of our history, our people's faith in our country's fate is profoundly shaken. A recent survey tells us that almost half of them now expect our national divisions to lead to national breakdown. That is so easy to say, so hard to comprehend. Most of us have assumed the durability of the system which has always sustained our hopes. Through time and trials and in the toughest moment, our country, and our country's principles have prevailed. Despite the dangers and the doubts, most of us have felt a sure sense of security about our place in America and America's place in the world.
Our unease now is unusual – and it will not be easy to cure. We are told that our most urgent task is to heal division and build confidence and restore trust. But no one can fulfill the promise to bring us together unless he can also show us where we are going. We must believe again that we can find out what is wrong and begin to make things right.
So it is not possible, in a borrowed phrase, to just "cool" America. There is too much people will not be cool about. They see their sons sent to war and their jobs disappear. They are living everyday with the disquieting question a national news magazine asked more than a year ago: "Why doesn't anything work anymore?"
And nowhere is there less cool and more worry than in the tide of anger and apprehension about crime in America. Too often, on the night-time streets of any town, there is no one to see and the only thing on the sidewalks after dark is fear. In the last decade, crime across the country climbed by an incredible 148% – and violent crime alone increased 130%.
Those numbers were election issues in 1968 and 1970. They are likely to be an issue again in 1972. But those numbers are also people and in 1971 it is people who are in trouble. A cabdriver in the city of New York refuses to change anything larger than a five dollar bill – but he still worries that his next passenger may kill him for the petty cash. A father in the slums of Detroit does his very best with the very little he has – and then one day he finds heroin and a hypodermic needle hidden on his fourteen-year-old's closet shelf. A housewife in the suburbs of Los Angeles wants to read the late evening edition of the next morning's paper – but yesterday's news warns her not to test her safety with an 11 P.M. walk to the corner store. A merchant in the center of Dallas buys burglar alarms and safety locks and shatterproof glass – but repeated robberies drain his profits and finally destroy his business.
No matter what else we do for our country, we must do far more to combat the mounting wave of crime. So much is at stake. What will we gain from prosperity – if crime continues to threaten our livelihood and our lives? What tranquillity will come from peace – if crime turns more urban streets into virtual free fire zones? Americans will not settle for that – and they should not have to settle for it. They have the right to live and work free from fear.
There are men in high places – men of the law who should surely know better – who ask us to rely on tough talk and a turn toward repression. They are trying to enforce order by stretching the law. They are trying to preserve the country by whittling away at constitutional rights. And their tactics are a real danger to justice in America. American justice is endangered when an official voice proclaims the guilt of a suspect still presumed innocent – and when, in the midst of the Calley case, it takes a letter from a young army captain to remind the President of the United States of his responsibility to the rule of law. American justice is endangered when disrespect for legal principles becomes an accepted public practice: disrespect in the form of wiretapping without a court order – which is simply and plainly unconstitutional; disrespect in the form of preventive detention – which the Administration's own study tells us will not work; and disrespect in the form of "no knock" procedures – which violate a citizen's precious right to privacy in his own home.
And perhaps the worst tragedy is that repressive tactics like this have made no gains against rising crime. In the last two years – years when we were promised success – we have seen more and more failure as the crime rate continued to soar. Tough talk and repression may satisfy a psychic longing to strike back at lawlessness. They may win a few more precincts or a few more votes. And they will also defeat the cause of liberty and distract us from the real work of fighting crime.
But I believe that there is hope – that we can make our streets safer and our homes more secure. I believe in this America – that the system has not failed, though some leaders may have failed the system. I believe we can use our country's principles to build law and order – and law with order – and crime control instead of code words. We will not find any of those in campaign speeches
or epithets or sudden dramatic shifts in the Supreme Court. Instead, we must ask hard questions, settle for no easy answers, and insist on solutions which can really turn the tide against lawlessness.
We have already been told much of what must be done. Presidential Commissions and Executive Task Forces and Senate Committees have parsed and analyzed the crisis. In 1969, the President's Commission on Violence in America estimated that it would cost an additional $6 billion to mount an effective fight for law and order. But we are still spending far less than we should – and accomplishing far less than we must. It is time to act now – in all the ways we know are critical. I hope to outline a program for action in my next column.
LAW AND ORDER: BEYOND THE CODE WORD,
SUMMER 1971-PART II
In my last column, I wrote about the urgent threat of crime and the Administration's failure to build law and order. But merely naming the threat and pointing to the failure is not enough. A victory for the rule of law and the security of people will require reform throughout the criminal justice system.
We have been warned again and again that the system is overburdened with victimless crimes. Too often, we have tried to deal with personal problems that are social problems by outlawing them. Now federal help and local reform must develop alternative methods to treat offenses like drunkenness. We can no longer afford to tolerate the policies which force the police and the courts to waste their time instead of protecting people and property from crime.
Police departments should not be a dumping ground for our neglected social ills. And neither should policemen be forced to act as clerks. A recent study in a medium-size city reported that over 50% of police time was committed to administrative assignments. A patrolman belongs on his beat, not behind a desk – and Washington must make that possible with money to train and hire administrative help. Washington must support our local police – to make them as effective as they can be and as fair as they should be. They deserve better pay, better equipment, and better training. Only then, will society deserve and command the best possible law enforcement.
But more policy with more resources are not the whole answer because our police cannot do the whole job alone. So much ultimately depends on our courts and our correctional system. And their persistent defects have led to repeated disaster.
If justice delayed is justice denied, there is far too little justice in America's courts. Across the United States, according to the Census Bureau, over half of the persons in prison or jail are not there because they have been judged guilty of a crime. Most of them are simply waiting, often as long as eighteen months, for a day in court. It is like the Red Queen's jurisprudence in Alice in Wonderland: first the punishment, then the trial. And the results should not be surprising. To clear the backlog, judges and prosecutors allow thousands of defendants to plead guilty to reduced charges. In the end, whatever sentence is passed is frequently less that it should be and usually long after the offense. No wonder the President's violence commission concluded that court delay was contributing significantly to a nationwide breakdown in law and order.
I am convinced that we can change all that. We can act at the national level to pay at least some of the bill for modernizing court procedures, hiring professional administrators, and streamlining jury selection. If computers can program our intercontinental defense, they can surely program court calendars to assure swifter justice for every suspect – and a stronger defense for every city and neighborhood. With the right investment, we can achieve Chief Justice Burger's goal of a sixty-day limit before trial – and that would mean fairer law and more order everywhere in America.
And we must make a similar investment in our correctional system. Today, we are giving less than 3% of our criminal justice funds to penal reform and convict rehabilitation. What are we getting in return? Prisons that are schools for crime – prisons that turn first-time criminals into repeat offenders instead of productive citizens. How ironic that we are willing to spend so much to catch a thief – and so little to change him so that we will not have to catch him over and over again.
A commitment of will and resources to reform the criminal justice system can begin to build law and order. But we must do far more.
We must try to root out the causes of crime. I am not talking about deteriorated housing or the shame of poverty – we must respond to them because response is right, not for the sake of a distant relief from crime. And I am not talking about Supreme Court decisions – few prospective lawbreakers hear of them and even fewer read them.
I am instead talking about the evil white powder Stewart Alsop calls the "city killer". I am talking about the epidemic of heroin which is responsible for 50% of our urban crime. And I am talking about people twisted into addicts and lawbreakers: about a section of New York City, where 18,000 men and women – out of a total population of 58,000 – are helpless slaves to a heroin habit; about the city of Washington, where 67% of the addicts are less than 26 years old – because very few addicts live to be very old; about the soldiers who did not go to jail or flee to Canada – and are now carrying a horrible curse home to their towns and their families; about 250,000 Americans who attack countless fellow citizens and steal billions of dollars to feed an expensive, murderous, implacable addiction.
A large part of the answer to the question of what causes crime is heroin. But for heroin itself, there are no easy answers and there is no single answer. So much has failed and so little has succeeded. And at least part of the reason for failure is our half-hearted effort. Together, federal. state, and local programs are today reaching less than 10% of America's addicts.
Over a month ago, I sponsored new narcotics legislation in the Senate – and the President called for very similar legislation two weeks later. But because the heroin threat is so urgent, I am now certain that every recent proposal from every source is too little and too late. We are accomplishing and even asking for much less than we should.
What can we achieve? Obviously, there are both strengths and drawbacks in every current treatment method – from antagonist drugs to methadone maintenance. But those methods in combination can cut sharply into the rate of addiction. One authority tells us that methadone alone can become a heroin substitute for half of our potential criminal addicts.
We cannot neglect such an opportunity. The federal government must guarantee a comprehensive drug treatment program in every city and town facing a serious drug problem. And every local program must have enough room for every local addict – whether he volunteers for treatment or is required to take it after arrest. There must be no more waiting lists – while addicts wait, citizens are robbed and mugged. And there must be no competition for scarce federal funds – we must find enough money to combat heroin wherever it strikes, in our cities and among our soldiers.
A truly broad national program would cost $5 billion in the first five years. That is a lot of money – but it is only a fraction of the financial loss in the same period from the crime spawned by addiction – and it is a small price to pay for the security of our families, our friends, and our fellow citizens.
That's why I recently joined with Senator Harold Hughes and Senator Jacob Javits in introducing a bill to reform the entire federal attack on dangerous drugs. The bill will provide desperately needed funds to state and local governments to establish and evaluate their own treatment systems. It will provide new dollars for research and experimental programs. And it will expand nearly four-fold the federal commitment to treat addicts through local community centers. In all, it will add almost half a billion dollars to the war against narcotics.
That is a great advance, but the country still has a long way to go. The bill will create the basic structure for a comprehensive attack. We must use that structure to the maximum by appropriating more and more money for it over the next few years until we reach the level of a billion dollars a year – enough for a comprehensive federal guarantee. We owe that much to our children and ourselves.
There is no cheap way to conduct a war against heroin or a war against crime. There will be no gains without financial pains. And there is no escape from a fundamental choice.
We must decide to put our priorities where our problems are – in the streets of our own cities and the farms of our own land. We cannot tolerate a $5 billion cost overrun in a dubious ABM system – a 50% price increase in just two years – when we are spending less for a national war on cancer than the cost for one week of war in Viet Nam. From Seattle to Miami, in crime control and every other field of domestic endeavor, we must now turn again to the vital goals Lyndon Johnson so well advanced in the middle years of the last decade. We must find a new direction for America so we can bring Americans together.
The American system has been good to most of us. It now asks in return for our voices, our energy, our faith, and our trust in each other. I hope Americans are ready to respond – because together we can succeed. And success for America is the only aim worthy of our common heritage – which teaches us how good and how great our country can be.