MENU TITLE: Critical Criminal Justice Issues .

Series: NIJ Report
Published: May 1997
176 pages
395,755 bytes

Critical Criminal Justice Issues

Task Force Reports
From the American Society of Criminology

NCJ 158837

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Early Prevention of and Intervention for
Delinquency and Related Problem Behavior

Youth Violence

A New Vision for Inner-City Schools

Drug Policy Options: Lessons From Three Epidemics

Drugs and the Community

Violence Against Women: Overview

Domestic and International Organized Crime

Designing Out Crime

The State of the Police

A Crime Control Rationale for Reinvesting in
Community Corrections

Three-Strikes Legislation: Prevalence and
Definitions

American Crime Problems From a Global Perspective

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Preface

At the 1994 American Society of Criminology (ASC)
annual meeting, Attorney General Janet Reno
appealed to the assembled scholars of criminology
for their urgent assistance in dealing with some of
the major crime and criminal justice issues facing
the Nation and, hence, the Administration. Her
address to the ASC identified 12 such issues. 

On the day following her appeal to us, the ASC
National Policy Committee met and formed 12
corresponding task forces. The chairs of these task
forces had to find their expert collaborators
within the shortest span of time. Within a matter
of a few months, the task forces had completed
their reports, and they were submitted to Attorney
General Reno. 

In my submission I made it clear that:

1. The reports were those of groups of individual
ASC members. They do not represent any official
position of the ASC.

2. The Attorney General did not ask us for heavily
documented research papers, but rather for the
essence of knowledge on the various subjects. 

3. The reports cover agreements and controversies
on each of these issues, be they supportive or not
of currently existing
governmental policies or programs. 

The Attorney General read the reports with the
greatest attention, convened a meeting of task
force chairs at her office, and probed a variety of
findings (and policy implications) with the
greatest care. In her concluding remarks she
expressed her gratitude to the task forces and her
great satisfaction with our willingness to respond
so quickly, so thoroughly, and so helpfully. Many
of the findings have already found their way into
the policymaking process; others are likely to
follow the same path.

The Attorney General also noted with great interest
that our recent questionnaire--distributed to our
entire membership--revealed that a large number of
our members are engaged in policy-relevant research
and are willing to contribute to the policymaking
process. (She asked for a followup report on the
ASC Survey of Members'  Research.)

This volume includes summaries as well as the text
of all 12 task force reports. The summaries were
prepared by Aspen Systems Corporation, under the
direction of the National Institute of Justice. My
thanks go to Aspen for superbly summarizing the
reports.  

I wish to extend my thanks to all members who so
willingly devoted their time and effort--pro bono--
to this unprecedented service for the cause of
enlightened, humane, and effective criminal justice
policy. My gratitude also goes to Attorney General
Reno for offering us the opportunity to serve.

Freda Adler
President, 1994-1995
American Society of Criminology 

------------------------------

Foreword

There is a discernible urgency to the crime issue.
Crime and the fear of crime rank as the most
important issues in public opinion polls. Some
communities resemble war zones where gunshots ring
out every night. Other cities struggle to create
islands of civility amid threats to public order
posed by low-level criminal behavior that eludes
traditional measures. Appropriately, public
policymakers and administrators in the criminal
justice system are responding to the issue of crime
in all its complexity. Every aspect of the
infrastructure of our traditional criminal justice
policy is undergoing fundamental rethinking. Our
approaches to policing, adjudication, sentencing,
imprisonment, and community corrections are
changing in significant ways. Indeed, communities
that are suffering from crime are changing their
interactions with the agencies of the criminal
justice system as the concepts of community
policing, community prosecution, and community
justice take on real meaning in cities and towns
around the country. This combination--a sense of
urgency on the part of the public and a rapidly
changing policy response--creates a compelling need
for policy-relevant research. When Attorney General
Janet Reno
addressed the American Society of Criminology at
its annual meeting in November 1994, she challenged
Society members to translate their research
findings into recommendations that would benefit
the practitioners and policymakers who confront the

issues of crime and justice.

The reports presented in these pages are the
response to that challenge. The Society established
12 task forces in different areas of research
activity and asked the task force members to
distill their research findings into policy
recommendations that would advance the important
public debate now under way in the Nation. In this
regard, the members of the Society have performed a
valuable public service. We thank Dr. Freda Adler,
President of the Society, and the Society's members
for this remarkable contribution to improving our
understanding of the issues of crime and the
challenge of justice.

Jeremy Travis
Director
National Institute of Justice

------------------------------

Early Prevention of and Intervention for
Delinquency
and Related Problem Behavior

Marcia Chaiken, LINC, Co-chair
David Huizinga, University of Colorado, Co-chair 

Early Prevention of and Intervention for
Delinquency and Related Problem Behavior 

Issues

Strong evidence links early problem behavior to
later adolescent delinquency and serious adult
criminality. Many children in the United States are
lacking fundamental elements essential for human
development. These children are legally entitled,
but have no access, to safe shelter, adequate food,
basic health care, and sufficient preparation to
become economically viable adults. The absence of
these resources has been linked to abnormal
development, economically and socially marginal
existence, and persistent criminality.

Children whose parents are criminals have a high
probability of becoming delinquents. Those
identified in court as abused or neglected by their
parents are more likely than other children to
become delinquent. Offenders whose parents were
also criminals have a high probability of being
high-rate predatory criminals. However, whether or
not their parents have criminal histories, children
raised by mothers or fathers with good parenting
skills are less likely to become delinquents or
serious offenders. Inmates who assume responsible
family roles after they are released are less
likely to recidivate than offenders without family
ties. The vast majority of delinquents and
criminals eventually "mature out" of crime;
assumption of family responsibilities can be a key
factor in this process. 

Research documents the effectiveness of early
prevention and intervention in forestalling these
outcomes. Waiting until the mid-to-late teenage
years to intervene in persistent delinquency
ensures that the battle will be difficult, if not
impossible. The current focus on older juveniles is
at best a stopgap measure; it ignores younger
children, who, in the absence of early
prevention/intervention, will soon follow the same
nonproductive path as their teenage role models.
Research also suggests that early childhood
programs cost relatively little compared to the
costs associated with the problems they prevent
later, such as drug and alcohol abuse, teen
pregnancy, special education requirements, or
institutionalization. 

Successful early childhood programs when compared
to less
successful ones most often have these
characteristics:

o They attempt to ameliorate more than one or two
factors
associated with delinquency and focus on multiple
problem
behaviors.

o They are designed to be appropriate for children
of specific ages and at specific stages of 
development.

o They involve long-term efforts of more than a few
months, often lasting several years. 

Based on the above and other current research, the
task force policy recommendations focus on how the
U.S. Department of Justice can assist with early
prevention and intervention. 

Policy recommendations

o Early prevention. The U.S. Department of Justice
should take a leading role in the interagency
development of early prevention efforts that have
shown evidence of being effective, in 
particular: 

o Establishment of home visitation programs for
mothers at high risk for abusing, neglecting, or
inadequately providing for the needs of their
children. 

o Establishment of educational daycare programs
with a home visitation component for at-risk
infants and children that provide assistance to
parents, teach parenting skills, and involve
marital and family therapy.

o De facto, as well as de jure, provision of
services to which children and adolescents are
legally entitled, especially services essential to
their safety and wholesome development (e.g.,
development of neighborhood-based collaborative
community development and youth development
programs that emphasize provision of basic needs
for infants and preschool children and actively
recruit and sustain participation of older children
in the nonschool hours). 

o Criminal parents. Early prevention and
intervention efforts should be targeted to parents 
who are under supervision of the criminal and
juvenile justice systems and the family  courts. In
the short term, these efforts can reduce crimes
committed by parents; in the long  term, they can
reduce future crimes that might otherwise be
committed by the children of offenders and 
interrupt the cycle of criminal behavior in
sequential generations. Promising approaches 
include: 

o Prenatal counseling, perinatal care (including
substance abuse treatment) for pregnant offenders,
and hands-on parenting classes for offenders with
babies and young children. 

o Therapeutic communities or similar residential
programs,
especially those that help inmates in assessing and
improving their interactions with children and
spouses, for prison or jail inmates who are within
a year of release or who have just been released. 

o Family focus/parenting programs with active door-
to-door outreach in communities in which many
children have fathers in jail or prison. Referral
and advocacy for health,  nutrition, and related
services for children of parents under
juvenile/criminal justice system supervision or
conditional release.

o Recruitment of more stable extended family
members to care for the children of offenders,
especially in cultural groups in which the extended
family has traditionally played a key role in
childrearing.

o Juvenile offenders. Programs should be developed
to assist families of youths 10 to 12  years old
who are coming to the attention of the juvenile
justice system. For older, more 
persistent juvenile offenders, community-based
programs that focus on behavioral skills  should be
developed.

o Research needs. The Department of Justice should
design and support high-quality  evaluations of
major prevention and intervention programs,
including those described above as
promising, for pre- and post-natal children,
preschool-age children, school-age children, and
school-age youths.

Early Prevention of and Intervention for
Delinquency and Related Problem Behavior

Three types of recommendations for policies and
actions relevant to the Department of Justice have
been generated from a review of current research
knowledge about early prevention and intervention.
These are recommendations for (1) general
prevention strategies best implemented in
collaboration with other Federal agencies; (2)
prevention/intervention strategies within the
justice system; and (3) additional justice system
research needs.

General strategies. The ASC Task Force recommends
that the U.S. Department of Justice take a leading
role in the interagency development of early
prevention efforts. Specific recommendations are
(1) the establishment of home visitation programs
for mothers at high risk for abusing, neglecting,
or inadequately providing for the needs of their
children; (2) the establishment of educational
daycare programs with a home visitation component
for at-risk infants and children; and (3) the
active assurance of provision to children and
adolescents of services to which they are legally
entitled, especially services essential to their
safety and wholesome development.

Strategies within the justice system. The ASC Task
Force recommends that the U.S. Department of
Justice target early prevention and intervention
efforts on parents under supervision of the justice
system--including the criminal justice system,
juvenile justice system, and family courts.
Fostering family skills can reduce crimes committed
by the parents, prevent future crimes committed by
the children of offenders, and interrupt the cycle
of criminal behavior in sequential generations. 

The ASC Task Force recommends the development of
programs to assist families of younger youths (ages
10 to 12 years) coming to the attention of family
courts or the justice system. For older,
persistently delinquent youths, we recommend the
development and replication of community-based
programs with demonstrated
effectiveness in promoting productive prosocial
behavior and constructive skills, including, for
those who already are parents, family interventions
to promote good parenting skills.

Additional justice system research needs. We
recommend the design and support of high-quality
evaluations of major prevention and intervention
programs, including types of programs noted as
"promising approaches" in this document.

The following document summarizes the research
findings that form the basis for these
recommendations and presents the
recommendations in more detail.

A Brief Review of the Research and Specific
Research-Based
Recommendations [1]

Introduction

The critical importance of early prevention and
intervention for reducing delinquency, crime, and
violence has been consistently documented by
research findings. There is clear indication that
problem behavior often begins early in life, and
there is strong evidence of substantial continuity
between problem behavior in early childhood and
later adolescent delinquency and serious adult
criminality. "An ounce of prevention is worth more
than a pound of cure" is more than an old adage.
Not only can early prevention and intervention
reduce future crime and delinquency, but waiting
until the mid-to-late teenage years to intervene in
serious, persistent delinquency commonly results in
an uphill and all too frequently fruitless battle. 

Intervening with youths whose life histories have
resulted in entrenched delinquent and violent
behavior is difficult and, at best, ends with
uncertain results. Also, the current focus on older
youths does little about the younger children who
will soon follow the same nonproductive paths as
the older, seriously delinquent youths in their
families and communities. The current focus on
older juveniles is at best a stopgap measure; in
the coming years, in the absence of effective early
prevention and intervention, younger delinquents
will replace today's older serious delinquents.

While many delinquency/violence prevention programs
target high-risk youths in the 13- to 18-year-old
age range, many of these programs involve
activities with uncertain or unproven outcomes.
Common approaches incorporated in current
delinquency prevention programs--such as after-
school recreation, conflict resolution, mentoring,
and employment programs, as well as anti-violence
school curriculums--may be desirable for reasons
unrelated to delinquency prevention; however, the
value of such programs in reducing delinquency and
violence remains more a matter of speculation than
of empirically demonstrated fact. Rather, it is at
the younger ages where promising results have been
more fully demonstrated.
As requested by Attorney General Janet Reno in her
November 1995 address to the American Society of
Criminology, this document briefly summarizes
current research understanding about early
prevention and intervention approaches that are and
are not likely to reduce crime and delinquency. The
summary is followed by three types of research-
based recommendations: recommendations for (1)
general prevention strategies best implemented in
collaboration with other Federal agencies; (2)
prevention/intervention strategies within the
justice system; and (3) additional justice system
research needs.

Common Elements and Successful Approaches for Early
Prevention and Intervention

Several recent reviews of prevention research and
evaluation literature independently concluded that
promising results have been achieved by early
childhood programs with a set of common
characteristics. Compared to less successful
programs, successful programs are most often: (1)
more comprehensive, attempting to ameliorate more
than one or two factors associated with delinquency
and simultaneously focusing on multiple problem
behaviors; (2) designed to be appropriate for
children of specific ages and at specific stages of
development; and (3) long-term efforts of more than
a few months, often lasting several years. 

Among the most successful primary prevention
programs at early ages are home visitation programs
that target young, usually single, mothers during
their pregnancy and provide assistance for mother
and child up to age 2 or 3; enriched preschool
(Head Start) programs that incorporate home
visitation and provide assistance to parents; or
programs that teach parenting skills, assisting
parents with troublesome youngsters and involving
marital and family therapy. All of these program
types have been demonstrated to reduce future crime
and violence, as well as related forms of problem
behavior, and provide greater assurance of
developing a more successful life course for the
youngsters involved. Research has suggested that a
sevenfold savings in public expenditures can be
achieved by implementing effective early childhood
programs; they cost relatively little compared to
the costs associated with the problems they prevent
in later childhood and the teen years: drug and
alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, special education
requirements, and other educational and special
needs of
delinquents. Similarly, other studies have
indicated that early intervention programs that
prevent violent crime cost the same as, or less
than, institutionalizing older, seriously
delinquent youths (and early intervention is much
more cost effective when other costs associated
with serious delinquency in the teen years are
considered). In both the short term and the long
run, targeting delinquent adolescents with a "get
tough, lock them up" program costs more and is less
effective in reducing crime than
intervention in early childhood.

Other Promising Approaches Involving School-Age
Children

Beyond the preschool years, the programs that hold
the greatest promise for preventing delinquency and
reducing recidivism among already-delinquent
children are those that incorporate multiple
approaches for promoting positive behavior and
teaching social and other life skills. Programs
that are provided in a community setting have had
better results than those implemented in an
institutional environment. There is also some
evidence that promising results may be achieved by
strategies and programs that involve: changes in
school ecology/organization (especially those that
increase parent involvement), monitoring and
rewards for good behavior, providing special help
from tutors and others for those identified by
diagnostic/prescriptive methods, special education
programs for disruptive middle- and high-school
students, and the currently popular programs for
conflict resolution and cognitive behavioral anti-
violence curriculums. In general, however, although
they appear promising, these programs have not been
evaluated with regard to their ability to reduce
delinquency, violence, or other problem behaviors. 

In addition, some studies have found that after-
school recreation programs (both school- and
community-based) can reduce delinquent involvement.
It must be carefully noted, however, that such
programs are only successful if they aggressively
recruit youths and work to maintain high
participation rates. Simple provision of
recreational programs is not sufficient. 

Although evaluations of employment/vocational/job-
training programs for adults have indicated their
effectiveness, similar outcomes for programs aimed
at juveniles have not been realized unless a major
educational component has been incorporated. Since
these findings have been replicated in a number of
studies, and since employment and job opportunities
for school-age children are popular, stress should
be placed on frequently used delinquency-reduction 
approaches and the need for a significant
educational component. 

Current Programs for School-Age Youths 

Even the best prevention and intervention programs
for school-age children have been unable to greatly
reduce delinquency, nor should they be expected to
significantly reduce the proportion of
delinquent youths who will come to the attention of
the justice system. Some argue that such programs
can be expected to reduce recidivism among already
adjudicated adolescents by no more than about 5
percent. While more significant results can be
expected from efforts that focus on school-age
children who are younger than those who are
typically adjudicated--i.e., children who are 10,
11, and 12 years of age--the juvenile justice
system seldom acts in cases involving such
youngsters. And in neighborhoods where delinquency
rates are high and effective prevention programs
are most needed, there is a dearth of community-
based organizations with staff trained to promote
positive behavior and teach life skills to youths.
Too frequently, resources for delinquency
prevention are being used for types of programs
that have been found consistently to have no
effect--including psychotherapy, intensive social
casework, employment/vocational programs without an
educational component, and peer counseling.
Moreover, Federal funds for delinquency prevention
are being congressionally earmarked for unproven
programs offered by organizations with more
political clout than demonstrated success.

Implications

Although it might be considered beyond the direct
purview of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), a
proactive agency role in the development of early
prevention efforts is suggested by the demonstrated
positive effects and cost effectiveness of early
childhood prevention strategies in reducing future
long-term  involvement in delinquency (and by
inference, later criminality). In particular, DOJ
could be the vanguard for interagency efforts
promoting the widespread use of home visitation
programs for high-risk mothers and educational
daycare programs with a home
visitation component. The Department can also
encourage the implementation of strategies that
focus on improving the nurturing skills of parents
who are under the supervision of the justice system
and who have infants and preschool children. Rather
than continuing to fund the implementation of
programs known to be  ineffective or
counterproductive, replications and evaluations of
promising programs are strongly suggested.

Through continuing support for studies such as the
Project on Human Development in Chicago
Neighborhoods (National Institute of Justice) and
the Program of Research on the Causes and
Correlates of Delinquency (Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency
Prevention), DOJ has been and continues to be at
the forefront of developing basic research
information on which to design prevention and
intervention programs. However, development of and
support for the evaluation of promising programs
lags way behind. As a result, there are many
promising ongoing and new prevention strategies
about which we know practically nothing. 

While it is extremely important to continue and to
expand basic research efforts, it is also critical
to ensure that major
prevention and intervention initiatives are
adequately evaluated. Without such evaluation, the
knowledge on which to base informed decisions about
prevention and intervention strategies--including
the "get tough" and "increased incarceration"
initiatives now in vogue--is simply not available.
The likelihood of wasting a great deal of effort
and considerable expenditure on ineffective
programs that do little to reduce delinquency,
crime, and violence is very large.

The absence of adequate evaluation information
results in a climate in which unproven popular fads
become the interventions of today--and the butt of
arguments tomorrow about the futility of
prevention. Let us use what we know now about what
works to provide more effective prevention--and
learn more about what works, so we can do better in
the future. 

Recommendations for General Strategies

o Research-based recommendation: We recommend that
the U.S. Department of Justice  take a leading role
in the interagency development of early prevention
efforts. In particular,  we advocate the
establishment of (1) home visitation programs for
mothers at high risk for  abusing, neglecting, or
inadequately providing for the needs of their
children, and (2)  educational daycare programs
with a home visitation component for at-risk
infants and  children.

Summary of research basis for recommendation:
Consistent research and evaluation findings
indicate that these two kinds of programs can
substantially reduce later delinquency and
criminality. They also can reduce other individual
health and mental health problems and lead to more
positive outcomes for the youths involved. It is
estimated that early childhood programs such as
these can save future public expenditures at a 1:7
ratio. In addition, early prevention programs are
at least as, and often more, cost effective than
crime reduction approaches that depend on
incapacitation and long-term sentences for older
delinquent youths, even when only justice system
costs are considered.

o Research-based recommendation: We recommend that
decisonmakers pursue de facto as  well as de jure
provision of services to which children and
adolescents are legally entitled, especially
services essential to their safety and wholesome
development. Summary of research basis for
recommendation: Many children in the United States
are lacking fundamental elements essential for
human development. While these children are legally
entitled to safe shelter, adequate food, basic
health care, and sufficient
preparation for adult economic viability, the
actual lack of access to these resources has been
linked to a failure to develop
normally, to economically and socially marginal
lives, and to persistent criminality.

Promising approaches:

o Better accountability and quality assurance in
public and private agencies mandated to provide
essential resources for infants, toddlers, and
school-age children. 

o Advocates who are able to help caregivers and
adolescents circumvent bureaucratic barriers in
agencies mandated to provide essential resources.

o Neighborhood-based youth-development
organizations that provide sustained and
comprehensive support and opportunities needed for
wholesome development from early childhood through
the teen years. Approach shown by research to be
ineffective:

o Services provided by traditional social welfare
organizations.

Recommendations for Strategies Within the Justice
System

Based on consistent research findings on early
prevention and intervention, there are several
recommendations directly related to the justice
system.

Research-based recommendation: Target early
prevention and
intervention efforts on parents under supervision
of the justice system--including the criminal
justice system, juvenile justice system, and family
courts. In the short term, these can reduce crimes
committed by the parents; in the long term, they
can reduce future crimes committed by the children
of offenders and interrupt the cycle of criminal
behavior in sequential generations. 

Summary of research basis for recommendation:
Children whose parents are criminals have a
relatively high probability of becoming
delinquents. Children identified in court as having
been abused or neglected by their parents are more
likely than other children to become delinquent.
Offenders whose parents were also criminals have a
high probability of being high-rate predatory
criminals. However, whether or not their parents
have criminal histories, children raised by mothers
or fathers with good parenting skills are less
likely to become delinquent and serious  offenders.

Inmates who assume responsible family roles after
they are released are less likely to recidivate
than offenders who do not have family ties. The
vast majority of delinquents and criminals
eventually "mature out of crime"; assumption of
family responsibilities can be a key factor in this
process. Promising approaches:

o Prenatal counseling, perinatal care for pregnant
offenders, and hands-on parenting classes for
offenders with babies and young children. Since a
majority of women offenders are substance abusers,
substance abuse treatment is frequently an
important component of perinatal care for
offenders.

o Therapeutic communities (TC's) or similar
residential programs for prison or jail inmates who
are within a year of release and who have just been
released; in particular, TC's in which inmates
receive professional help in assessing and
improving their interactions with children and
spouses.

o Family focus/parenting programs with active door-
to-door outreach in communities in which many
children have fathers in jail or prison. Referral
and advocacy for health, nutrition, and related
services for children of parents under
juvenile/criminal justice system supervision or
conditional release. 

o Accessible educational services/employment-skills
training for young mothers, especially in tandem
with Head Start-type childcare for their infants
and toddlers and more traditional Head Start
childcare for their preschool-age children. 

o Recruitment of more stable extended family
members to care for the children of offenders--
especially in cultural groups in which the extended
family has traditionally played a key role in child
rearing. 

o Neighborhood-based collaborative community- and
youth-development programs that emphasize provision
of basic needs for infants and preschool children
and actively recruit and sustain participation of
older children during nonschool hours. 

Approach shown by research to be counterproductive:

o Repeated out-of-extended-family placements of
children of offenders (including out-of-extended-
family placement for neglected/abused children).

Research-based recommendation: Develop programs to
assist families of younger youths (10- to 12-year-
olds) coming to the attention of the justice
system. For older, persistent offenders, develop
behavioral skill-oriented community-based programs.

Summary of research basis of recommendation:
Planned services for families of younger youths
coming to the attention of the juvenile justice
system (police and courts) are minimal, often
because the  behavior of these youths is not seen
as dangerous. Yet youths who become involved in
delinquency before they are adolescents are at
higher risk for future involvement in crime than
youths who become delinquent at later ages. Parents
who seek help for such youths most frequently turn
to schools. Most schools are not prepared to
provide services consistently found to reduce
delinquency
effectively, such as parent training and home
visits to assist in family processes. 

Promising approaches:

o Referrals of 10-, 11-, and 12-year-olds detained
by the police to neighborhood organizations
providing sustained activities during the nonschool
hours, under the guidance of adults trained to
provide the types of support and opportunities
young adolescents and their families benefit from
and enjoy.

o Provision of support services to the families of
such youths, in particular, parent training and
home visitation programs to assist in family
organization, social skills, and problem solving.

o For older teens who have persistently been
engaging in delinquent behavior, placement in
communal detention settings where youths gradually
earn status and privileges through vocational
achievement and through contributions to the
welfare of all in the "community"--followed by
supervised participation in similar activities
after they earn their way out of detention.

Approaches shown by research to be ineffective or
counterproductive: 

o Secure detention for adolescents.

o Any form of detention in the absence of
transitional care on return to the community. 

o Programs consisting of short-term efforts to fix
individual deficits or to prevent a particular type
of delinquent behavior.

o Employment/job programs for school-age youths
(despite their success for adults) that do NOT
include a major educational component. 

o Programs implemented by organizations that are
experiencing fiscal or administrative difficulties.
Also, programs implemented by organizations with
little or no proven experience in delinquency
prevention and youth development but, because of
political
connections, receive Federal "pork-barrel" funding.

Recommendations for Meeting Additional Justice
System Research Needs 

Research-based recommendation: Design and support
high-quality evaluations of major prevention and
intervention programs,
including types of programs noted as "promising
approaches" in this document.

Summary of research basis for recommendation:
Almost all reviews of early prevention and
intervention programs observe that there is a
dearth of valid evaluation information about a wide
variety of  promising programs. The Office of
Justice Programs has been a leader and continues to
be at the forefront of developing basic research
information on which to design prevention and
intervention programs, including much of the
research conducted by ASC members that forms the
basis of this report.

However, development of and support for the
evaluation of promising programs lags way behind.
While evaluation findings form the basis for
programs and approaches described in this paper as
promising, most evaluations have been limited to
studying the implementation process or outcomes in
a few sites. Without systematic replication and
evaluation, we cannot at this time definitively
recommend national implementation of some of the
most promising programs and approaches described
here. In addition, there are many other potentially
promising ongoing and newly developed prevention
strategies about which we know practically nothing.

It is critical to ensure that major prevention and
intervention initiatives are adequately evaluated.
Without such evaluation, information about ongoing
programs, including the "get tough" and "increased
incarceration" initiatives now in vogue, solid
findings that can form the basis for decisions
about prevention and intervention strategies are
simply not available. Without adequate evaluation,
the likelihood is great that a great deal of effort
and considerable expenditure will be wasted on
ineffective programs that do little to reduce
delinquency, crime, or violence. 

Note

1. Recommendations are based on research reported
in over 100 publications authored by members of the
American Society of Criminology (ASC). Given the
purpose of this document to briefly summarize this
literature and draw on consistent findings for
policy and practice, it does not reference the
individual findings of the many researchers who
contributed to our current
understanding of early prevention and intervention
for delinquency and related problems. However,
several ASC members conducted their own reviews of
an extensive corpus of research that are
incorporated in this document, and we would like to
acknowledge their efforts; they are Richard
Catalano, David Farrington, Peter Greenwood, Nancy
Guerra, J. David Hawkins, Adele Harrell, Mark
Lipsey, Patrick Tolan, and Franklin Zimring.

------------------------------

Youth Violence 

Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie Mellon University, Chair

Youth Violence

Issues

Sharp increases in juvenile violence have
heightened the sense of personal risk experienced
by those who live and work in urban areas and
contributed strongly to the widespread fear of
crime in general. This fear derives from the
randomness (the perpetrators and victims of
juvenile homicides are strangers about 30 percent
of the time), early onset, and seriousness of
violence perpetrated by youths. Between 1985 and
1992, the juvenile homicide arrest rate, the
juvenile homicide victimization rate, the number of
juvenile homicides involving guns, and the rates of
murder committed by 15-and 16-year olds increased
by more than 100 percent. In addition, the arrest
rate of nonwhite juveniles for drug offenses
doubled. Public anxiety extends beyond fears for
personal safety to include concerns about an
irreparable breach of the social contract. 

A working hypothesis about the growth in juvenile
violence is as follows: 

o When crack cocaine hit the streets in 1985, it
changed illegal drug buying habits and 
distribution patterns. The number of transactions
increased markedly, as people bought one  "hit" at
a time, rather than larger quantities that could be
stored for later use. 

o To accommodate the higher number of transactions,
youths
(primarily African Americans in  center-city areas)
were recruited into the drug market. 

o Since they could not easily ask the police for
protection, the new recruits needed guns to 
protect themselves and their valuable wares. 

o Their tight networking through schools and the
streets led to a broader diffusion of guns  into
the larger youthful community, primarily for self-
defense but also, perhaps, for status. 

o Because of the presence of guns, the fights that
routinely occur among youths can rapidly  turn from
fist fights to shootings. Adult gun carriers, even
those in the drug market, seem  better able to
exercise restraint.

o As more young people carried guns, they provided
an incentive for other youths to arm  themselves,
resulting in an escalating process of gun-carrying
(the familiar "arms race"),  which, in turn, has
led to a greater propensity in any dispute for
either party to use his gun  before the other
person does.

The key here is the "diffusion hypothesis," which
suggests that the growth in juvenile homicides is a
consequence of adoption within the larger community
of behavior endemic to the drug industry: carrying
guns and using them to settle disputes. The
diffusion hypothesis is supported by the fact that,
since 1985, the homicide arrest rates of both white
and nonwhite juveniles have grown, respectively, by
80 percent and 120 percent, although there has been
no evident growth in the involvement of white
youths in the drug market.

Policy recommendations

o Guns on the street. Because carrying a handgun is
illegal almost everywhere, the task of  getting
guns out of the hands of juveniles requires
stronger and more focused enforcement of existing
legislation. The Federal Government's main role
should be to offer technical assistance to
localities that would like to pursue this strategy
but need help in doing so. For example, the recent
National Institute of Justice (NIJ) project in
Kansas City came out with some important findings
with regard to approaches for
capturing illegal guns. Even if we were to stop the
flow of guns to and from drug markets, we still
have to worry about the guns that are already
present in the streets. 

o Guns in the market. Illicit gun markets
(especially those that sell to kids, and especially
in  urban areas) must be more tightly controlled.
Law enforcement has focused on the drug  market
while largely ignoring the market for illegal
firearms. The challenge is a clear  Federal
responsibility because so much of the traffic in
guns is interstate. 

o Treatment and prevention. Consideration should be
given to shrinking the size of drug  markets by
siphoning off some of the demand for drugs.
Measures should include increasing  the resources
and effort put into treatment and prevention and
finding ways to bring  certified addicts into
treatment programs, like those who are being
supported under the SSI  program.

o Socialization of youth. In the long run, we must
face the widespread problem of  socializing the
growing number of young people who see no hope for
their economic future  and are willing, therefore,
to take whatever risks are necessary to gain
respect and earn an  income. These disenfranchised
youths represent ready recruits for any illicit
markets that  present themselves. 

------------------------------

Youth Violence

Background and Public Concerns

One of the important sources of widespread public
fear of crime is the enhanced sense of risk
resulting from the increase in juvenile violence.
This fear has led policymakers to resort to
draconian legislative responses (such as broad-
scope three-strikes laws) focused on sweeping
increases in the use of incarceration to control
crime that are not likely to be effective and are
likely to represent a major burden on criminal
justice systems and taxpayers.

Thus it is important that we examine the facts that
reflect changes that have taken place during the
past decade involving juveniles in violence, with
particular emphasis on the aspect of violence that
is probably most fear-inducing--juvenile homicide.
The fear  derives partly from a variety of
considerations that create a sense of randomness
when juveniles act violently. Juvenile homicides
involve strangers about 50 percent more often than
do adult homicides: about 30 percent of juvenile
homicides are random compared with about 20 percent
of adult homicides. 

These concerns are exacerbated by the presence of
guns--especially assault weapons with high
firepower--as a major factor in juvenile homicides.
In light of doubts about their marksmanship and
grave concern about their using weapons at the
slightest provocation, many people who might
otherwise feel safe from homicide are very troubled
at the prospect of being engulfed by the sense of
escalating juvenile violence. The fear also
undoubtedly involves some concern that goes beyond
personal risk and must raise some anxiety about the
unraveling of the social fabric as we learn about
growing rates of misdeeds by the "upcoming
generation."

Some Facts About Juvenile Violence

In contrast to burglary and robbery, which are
crimes that peak sharply in the late teens and
early twenties, the age distribution of murder
arrestees has traditionally been quite flat. Until
1985, the peak of the age-specific arrest rate (the
"age-crime curve") for murder had a flat rate,
which hovered around the same value (about 25 per
100,000) for all the ages of 18 through 24 for the
entire period 1970 through 1985. During this
period, the rates for the ages under 18 were also
quite low; for 16-year-olds, for example, the rate
had been an almost constant rate of 12 per 100,000
from 1970 through 1985.

This picture of considerable stability in most
things related to homicide changed rather
dramatically beginning in about 1985, as crack
entered the national consciousness. The change in
1985 was a change from fairly stable, constant
trends, to a sudden upward change in direction,
although the transition point was different in
different places. There is a widespread sense that
there is a drug connection in all this, although
most people would guess that the connection is
pharmacological--young people get high on drugs,
which makes them lose their inhibitions, and that
gives rise to all the killing.

Between 1985 and 1992, we suddenly saw an upward
growth in the rate of homicides by young people,
their use of guns in homicides, and very sharp
growth in the involvement of nonwhite juveniles in
the drug industry. All of these factors had been
quite stable for nearly 15 years, leading in just 7
years to the following major changes:

o More than doubling of the juvenile homicide
arrest rate (with no change in the rates for 
adults over the age of 24). See figures 1a and 1b. 

o More than doubling of the juvenile homicide
victimization rate (with no comparable growth  in
the adult victimization rate). See figure 2. 

o More than doubling of the number of juvenile
homicides involving the use of guns (with no change
in the number of nongun homicides). See figure 3.

o Doubling in the arrest rate of nonwhite juveniles
for drug offenses (with no increase in the  arrest
rate of white juveniles). See figure 4.

The immediate challenge is to figure out what
scenario could be connecting these three sharp and
sharply focused changes. There is no question that
a variety of criminogenic factors in the
environment has contributed (or could have
contributed) to a worsening crime situation. But it
is not easy to identify what changes have occurred
that could account for so dramatic a change. For
this explanation, we turn to a working hypothesis
about the process that seems to have led to the
major growth in juvenile violence: 

o With the arrival of crack markets beginning in
about 1985, the number of drug transactions 
increased markedly partly because people were
buying a "hit" at a time, rather than buying 
larger quantities and keeping the inventory in
their relatively secure homes. 

o To accommodate this growth in demand for
transactions, youths, primarily African  Americans
in central-city areas, were recruited into those
drug markets. n Because drug traffickers cannot
easily call police for protection, their standard
practice is to  carry a gun in the drug markets to
protect themselves and their valuable wares. 

o The tight networking of youths through schools
and the streets has led to a broader  diffusion of
guns into the larger youthful community, primarily
for self-defense but also  perhaps for status-
seeking. Because adults are less tightly networked,
we do not see  comparable diffusion among them.

o As a result of the presence of guns, the fights
that are routine among youths can readily  turn
into shooting rather than merely fist fights.
Adults, even though they may also be  carrying guns
(and particularly those who work in the drug
markets), seem much better able  to exercise
restraint in using guns.

o The growing presence of guns among youths
provides an increased incentive for each 
additional youth to carry his own gun. This results
in an escalating process of gun-carrying  (the
familiar "arms race"), thereby leading in any
dispute to a greater
propensity to use the  weapon before the other
person does. 

The key here is the "diffusion hypothesis," which
suggests that the growth in the number of homicides
by youths attributable to the drug industry is a
consequence, not so much of the "systemic" murder
within the drug industry (the growth rate seems
much too high to be explained only by the limited
rates of homicide within the industry), but rather
of the adoption within the larger community that is
networked with the drug industry of some of the
mores that operate within that industry. And
prominent among those  mores is the carrying of
guns and use of them for settling disputes. 

The diffusion hypothesis is supported by the fact
that since 1985, the growth in the homicide arrest
rate of juveniles who are white has grown by 80
percent, and for nonwhite juveniles, it has grown
by 120 percent. (See figures 5a and 5b for a
comparison of adult and juvenile murder arrest
rates over the year.) This growth in the rate of
white juveniles arrested for homicide has occurred
with no evident growth in involvement in the drug
markets by white juveniles. (See figure 4.) 

Some Policy Responses

These observations suggest some policy actions,
both immediate and longer term, that should be
pursued: 

o For the immediate future, we have got to focus on
ways to get guns out of the hands of  youths,
especially in urban areas. Because carrying
handguns is illegal almost everywhere,  this
usually requires stronger and more focused
enforcement of existing legislation rather  than
any new legislation. An important Federal role here
is one of technical assistance to  localities who
would like to pursue this strategy, but need help
in doing so. For example,  the recent National
Institute of Justice project in Kansas City came
out with some important  results on approaches to
capturing illegal guns. Even if we were to stop the
flow of guns  from the drug markets, we still have
to worry about the guns that are already present in
the  streets.

o On a somewhat broader basis, we must find means
for exercising tighter control over illicit  gun
markets, especially those that sell guns to youths
in  urban areas. There are some interesting
parallels here to the illicit drug markets: both
peddle  dangerous products, and we have been
obsessed with one and have largely ignored the 
other. This challenge is clearly a Federal
responsibility because so much trafficking in guns 
is interstate.

o Because of the salient role of drug markets as a
primary causal factor, and in light of the 
demonstrated difficulty of impacting those markets
with enforcement, this may be the time  for
considering alternative means of shrinking their
size by weakening the demand from  those markets.
This could include increasing the amount of
resources and the effort put into  treatment and
prevention. It also calls for finding ways to bring
into treatment programs  certified addicts like
those who are being supported under the SSI
program, for example. 

o For the longer run, we must face the widespread
problem of socializing the growing number  of young
people who see no hope for their economic future,
are willing to take whatever  risks are necessary
to gain respect and to earn an income, and
represent ready recruits for  any illicit markets
that present themselves.

These suggestions encompass a considerable range of
activity, from the immediate police-level activity
of confiscating illegal guns in the street to the
much broader societal problem of helping to
socialize young people whose family--too often a
single mother with inadequate education,
insufficient employment skills, and little or no
external support--lacks the competence or structure
to do so effectively. 

These suggestions represent important challenges to
the Nation. Undoubtedly, each alternative will find
strong opposition for reasons that will seem
legitimate. Failing to meet these
challenges, however, makes it seem that the
epidemic of guns and homicide--which has been an
important source of distress and fear to the
Nation--is likely to continue. And, distress and
fear have elicited responses that are likely to
ignore the central problem and generally make
matters worse for the Nation. 

------------------------------

A New Vision for Inner-City Schools        

Ross D. London, Municipal Court Judge, Hoboken, New
Jersey, Chair

A New Vision for Inner-City Schools

Issues

Juvenile violence is at an all-time high, and many
have decided that only more deterrence measures can
effectively deal with delinquency. Criminologists
agree that deterrence works well for the average
working person with a family and a role in the
community. But for people who are unsocialized,
impulsive, and mindlessly destructive, deterrence
is an ineffective tool. If deterrence is to work,
people must be more deterrable.

Adequacy of parenting. Of all the factors found to
contribute to delinquency, the clearest and most
exhaustive evidence concerns the adequacy of
parenting. Abusive, incompetent, or rejecting
parents, and those who do not provide sufficient
supervision have a direct effect on the antisocial
behavior of their children. Poor parenting cannot
be viewed as the sole cause of delinquency. The
association between inadequate parenting and other
factors is, however, critical in predicting future
delinquency. These risk factors are parental
criminality and drug abuse, prenatal deficiency,
lack of education, poor supervision, and deficient
discipline. Chief among the factors indicative of
later serious delinquency is the age at onset of
significant misbehavior. The earlier a child
commits a youthful offense, the more likely it is
that such delinquency will continue and worsen over
time. Therefore, intervention must take place at
the earliest possible opportunity if it is to have
any lasting effect.

Delinquency and education. Criminologists believe
that the problem of delinquency is essentially a
problem of socialization. When the family fails in
this essential function, the task of socialization
must be taken up by the educational system. The
criminal justice system can only "pick up the
pieces" after delinquency has become a fact. Inner-
city education must be expanded, redesigned, and
enriched in order to create a new generation of
young people for whom the goal of deterrence has a
realistic chance of working. 

Policy recommendations

o Early child-parent intervention. Both public and
private early intervention (birth to age 5) 
programs should be implemented immediately and
include voluntary enrollment, extensive parent
training, and frequent home visits; they should be
long term, have low student-to-teacher ratios,
provide liberal subsidies for working parents, and
be competently monitored and evaluated.

o Early childhood education. Private early
childhood intervention programs that address the 
needs of the child and the parent should be
expanded and subsidized. The Head Start  program
should be improved by adding parent training and
home visits and by extending its  term beyond 1
year, especially in areas having a
disproportionate number of children at high  risk
for future delinquency.

o Pilot residential schools and foster parenting
for abused children. Significant grants  should be
made for pilot programs to develop a mixture of
public and private residential  schools, as well as
pilot projects for increased funding for foster
parenting for children of  abusive or demonstrably
incompetent parents. When evidence of abuse or
neglect is  established, when there is a refusal to
enter into an existing program of early childhood 
intervention, and when parental rights have been
terminated by court order, we must have  placement
alternatives readily at hand to raise the affected
children in a proper manner.  Residential schools
have the potential of being either a blessing or a
curse on the minority community. Rather than
engaging in politicized  debate on the issue of
"orphanages," we advocate establishing a number of
pilot programs  for residential schools that
contain the following elements: sufficient funding
to ensure an  education equal to the residential
education available to wealthier families,
education that  begins at the pre-K level, minority
staffing and an emphasis on minority values, and 
provision for voluntary enrollment.

o Pilot community schools. Well-developed and broad
pilot programs should be implemented for
development of comprehensive community schools that
are run on a districtwide basis (to avoid the
problem of stigmatizing children selected as the
most at risk). Schooling must go beyond the
acquisition of cognitive skills and serve as the
focus of many childcare programs, such as prenatal
screening, assessment and referral for treatment of
developmental problems, and preschool programs that
focus on both the child and its parents. These
community schools should remain open at night, on
weekends, and throughout the year. 

o Value of properly conducted evaluations. After
evaluating pilot prevention and treatment programs,
a limited number of well-funded  major
interventions with sufficient provision for
adequate research design and long-term  evaluation
should be implemented.

o Coordination of educational and criminal justice
objectives. The Department of Justice  should
coordinate with the Department of Education at the
highest level to ensure that the  concerns of the
law enforcement community are reflected in school
curriculums and that the  concept of early
childhood intervention is accepted as part of a
nationwide basic educational policy.

o Immediate need to focus on law enforcement
alternatives. Since even the best prevention 
programs need considerable time to bear fruit, we
have no choice but to immediately  upgrade our law
enforcement alternatives. Knowing full well the
ultimate futility of law  enforcement for a
generation of children who lack elementary
socialization and self-control,  we are nonetheless
obligated to detect and punish those who make life
intolerable for  others.

A New Vision for Inner-City Schools

Our country is beset by juvenile violence as never
before[1] and the electorate is impatient for
solutions. Given the generally disappointing
results of rehabilitation programs as a whole,[2]
many people--and many political leaders--have
decided that only more deterrence measures can
effectively deal with delinquency and that
preventive measures are only so much pork. 

Criminologists are in agreement that deterrence
does work--but not for everyone. Deterrence works
well for the average working person with a family
and a role in the community. But for people who are
unsocialized, impulsive, and mindlessly self-
destructive,
deterrence is an ineffective tool. Criminologists
have found that for deterrence to work, we need to
create not simply more or harsher deterrence
measures but more deterrable people. Can this be
done? The answer is encouraging: during the last 20
years,
criminologists have obtained clear and well-
documented data on the key factors involved in
delinquency--and have also obtained good evidence
to support the view that certain measures actually
work in reducing the rate of delinquency and
crime.[3] Central to all these programs is the
notion
of an expanded role for public education.

Background: Delinquency and Parental Adequacy

Of all the factors we have found that contribute to
delinquency,[4] the clearest and most exhaustive
evidence concerns the adequacy of parenting.[5]
Parents who are incompetent, abusive, or
rejecting,[6] parents who fail to maintain adequate
supervision over their children, and parents who
indeed are little more than children themselves
have direct effects on the antisocial behavior of
their children.7 Inadequacy of parenting cannot be
viewed in isolation as the sole cause of
delinquency. However, its association with other
factors is critical to predicting future
delinquency.[8] 

In conjunction with our efforts to identify the
most significant risk factors for delinquency
(criminality and drug abuse of parents, prenatal
deficiency, lack of education, poor supervision,
and inadequate disciplinary measures),[9] we have
begun to construct and evaluate programs that
attempt to counteract these factors.

Chief among the factors indicative of later serious
delinquency is the age at onset of significant
misbehavior: the earlier the child is found to have
committed a youthful offense, the more likely it
will be that such delinquency will continue and
worsen over time.10 This finding provides a focus
for any discussion of prevention. Intervention must
be performed at the earliest possible opportunity
if it is to have any lasting effect. Indeed, some
criminologists have explained the failure of many
programs directed toward adolescent rehabilitation
by noting that by the age of adolescence
interventions have come too late to be effective.11
There is widespread agreement among child
development professionals that by far the most
critical years for social development are birth to
age 6.12 Because of the centrality of parenting as
a factor
contributing to delinquency and the critical
importance of early manifestation of misconduct in
predicting future criminality, leading
criminologists have looked to early childhood
intervention as the most promising societal
response to delinquency thus devised.13

Delinquency Control and Education Reform

Our system of public education is largely the
product of 19th century social reform. It has
worked reasonably well for more than a hundred
years because it has rested on a well-established
assumption: while public education would serve the
needs of young people for a limited portion of the
day and calendar year, the child's family would
adequately provide for the child's development at
all other times. Although this may have been a fair
assumption for most of America throughout its
history, it is certainly not so today. In fact, in
our inner cities, the education process breaks down
precisely when the school day ends. Children who
return to a neighborhood rife with crime and drug
abuse, who return to a household with inadequate or
nonexistent parenting, are virtually programmed for
educational and societal failure despite the best
efforts of our school system. For public education
to fulfill its mandate--not just to get kids
"through school"--to produce responsible, self-
sufficient adults, it must provide the means to
educate every child, not only those with intact,
nurturing families, but also those who are deprived
of such life supports. To the extent that a child
suffers from such deprivation, the educational
system must act as effective parental supplements
and substitutes. 

We in the field of criminology believe that the
problem of
delinquency is essentially a problem of
socialization. Certainly, the most appropriate and
effective means of socialization is the family. But
when the family fails in this essential function,
the task of socialization must be taken up by the
educational system. The criminal justice system,
with all its resources to detect, prosecute, and
sanction offenders, simply cannot solve the problem
of delinquency--it can only pick up the pieces. It
is therefore necessary that criminal justice
objectives be explicitly recognized by educational
policymakers. What we propose in this report is a
number of concrete ways in which education in the
inner cities can be expanded, redesigned, and
enriched to create a new generation of young people
for whom the goal of deterrence has a realistic
chance of working.

Element One: Expanding Preschool Education

An increasing number of well-documented early 
childhood intervention programs have demonstrated a
significant effect on socialization and
delinquency.14 These programs typically involve:

o Identification of the at-risk population (i.e.,
low income, single parenthood, low educational
attainment).

o Early intervention (typically pre-K to first
grade).

o Extensive parent training. 

o Frequent home visits. 

o Duration of several years.

Of the number of such programs instituted in this
country, four have been evaluated with adequate
research models and over a long enough followup
period to track the results into adolescence and
early adulthood. These projects are located in
Michigan (The Perry School),15 Houston (Parent-
Child Development Center),16 Syracuse (Child
Development Project),17 and New Haven (Yale Child
Welfare Project).18 Each has shown a lasting
reduction in antisocial behavior, delinquency, and
adult criminality.19 Perhaps because these programs
are voluntary and are directed strictly toward
educational achievement (as opposed to being
regarded as delinquency prevention programs), there
is no reported evidence of a stigmatizing effect
that might interfere with social 
development. 

It is important to stress that these programs were
designed to address both the child (cognitive and
social development) and the parent (acquisition and
monitoring of parental skills). What distinguishes
these successful programs from a rash of
unsuccessful programs is their multiple components.
The causes of criminality and delinquency have been
found to be multiple: the more risk factors
present, the greater the risk of delinquency.
Therefore, the more factors addressed in an
intervention plan, the greater the likelihood of
success. Neither parent training nor educational
supplements alone are sufficient.20

Therefore, we recommend an expansion and
subsidization of private programs for early
childhood intervention that address both the needs
of the child and the parent. We further believe
that the existing Head Start program can be
significantly improved for those who qualify by
including parent training, home visits, and a
lengthening of its term beyond 1 year.21 

Element Two: The Community School--a New Vision

For many years, schools have been regarded by
social scientists as natural settings for the
training of socialization skills.22 However,
programs designed to reduce misconduct have proven
to be of little value over extended time periods
either because resources have been inadequate or
because out-of-school conditions have undermined
what is learned in the classroom.23 

In keeping with our finding that early intervention
and multicomponent approaches are the only proven
programmatic means of curtailing delinquency for
at-risk children, we propose a new concept of
public education in the inner cities. We share the
vision of Dr. Edward Zigler, one of the founders of
Head Start, who proposed that schooling go beyond
the acquisition of cognitive skills, which serves
as the focus of many childcare programs, such as
prenatal screening, assessment and referral for
treatment of developmental problems, and preschool
programs that focus on both the child and the
parent.24 Just such a concept has been put into
effect by Dr. Edward Zigler's "School of the 21st
Century," a program that has been adopted in more
than 250 communities nationwide.25 Furthermore,
community schools should remain open for these and
other activities at night, on weekends, and
throughout the year. The justification for 3-month
summer vacations has long past: We must not abandon
inner-city youths to the streets during these
months with the absurd hope that they are somehow
going to find jobs.

Element Three: Residential Schools for the Most in
Need

It is in the context of redefining the mandate and
scope of public education that residential schools
become a promising option for children who are
fundamentally deprived of effective parenting. For
these children, a well-funded, well-equipped, and
well-staffed residential school may be their only
lifeline to a normal, healthy life.

Despite our efforts at early intervention, we must
recognize that increased support services are
futile for a significant number of children who are
subject to chronic abuse and neglect.26 Because of
the value of family preservation, there is no doubt
that outside placement should be used as a last
resort only, but when evidence of abuse or neglect
is established and when there is a refusal to enter
into an existing program of early childhood
intervention, we must have parent placement
alternatives readily at hand to raise the affected
children in a proper manner. Despite the impressive
performance of parent training programs, we must
consider the large number of cases where parents
are incapable of cooperating.27 For the parents of
such children, out-of-home placement becomes a
necessity, either in foster care or a group
residence. 

We believe that the proposal for the implementation
of residential boarding schools for children who
are deprived of minimally adequate parenting is a
serious one. There has never been a better
opportunity for educational reformers of all
political persuasions to combine their visions and
expertise for the establishment of the kind of
residential schools in which we can take pride. 

At present, there is much uncertainty as to the
long-term effectiveness of residential placement.28
In addition, the potential cost of residential
placement is quite variable[29] and dependent on
the
extent of physical improvements envisioned,
student-teacher ratios, and the amount and quality
of services offered. Criminologists and social
planners agree, however, that underfunding of
residential projects will result in overcrowding,
inadequate facilities and services, and in turn,
stigmatization of the programs and the students,
and educational and social failure. A well-funded
program, one that creates beautiful, campus-like
environments, with small classes, excellent
services, and highly skilled and motivated staff
can be instrumental in enabling thousands of
children to succeed educationally and socially.

Clearly, there is much at stake in "getting it
right." Residential schools have the potential of
being either a blessing or a curse on the minority
community. Therefore, rather than engaging in
politicized debates on the issue of "orphanages,"
we advocate the establishment of a number of pilot
programs for residential schools that have the best
chance of succeeding. These should contain the
following elements:

o Funding sufficient to ensure an education for the
children that equals residential education 
available to wealthier families.

o Schooling that begins at the pre-K level. 

o Minority staffing and emphasis on respect for
minority cultural values. 

o Provision for voluntary enrollment. 

Also, rather than advocating a policy of one or
more placement alternatives, we recommend the
establishment of significant grants for the
development of a mixture of public and private
residential schools for children of abusive or
demonstrably incompetent parents and pilot projects
for increased funding for foster parenting. The
results of these pilot projects will be critical to
the development of social policies that can be
applied on a large-scale basis during the next
century.

Timetable for Implementation

Despite our impatience for solutions and despite
our enthusiasm for innovative programs, we must
acknowledge that, on the whole, government programs
designed to combat delinquency have been
disappointing.30 Therefore, we must approach larger
scale implementation with great care. We have
learned that, in terms of long-term effects on
delinquency, half a loaf is not better than none.31
Piecemeal solutions are not only unproductive and
wasteful but tend to diminish the chances for
effective measures by
discouraging people against prevention generally.
The time schedule for implementation should be
dependent on the degree of proven success of each
of the projects mentioned. Therefore, we propose a
project implementation program as follows: 

Immediate implementation of early intervention
programs. The success of early child-parent
intervention programs is documented well enough at
this point to suggest national implementation and
replication with both private and public options.
In this
replication process we must insist that these
programs include the following key factors:

o Voluntary enrollment. 
o Early intervention (birth to age 5). 
o Extensive parent training. 
o Frequent home visitation. 
o Duration of several years. 
o Low student-teacher ratios. 
o Liberal subsidies for working parents. 
o Competent monitoring and evaluation.

As an alternative to subsidized, private-sector
programs of child care, we also recommend that the
existing Head Start program be upgraded to consist
of the above features, at least in those
geographical areas having a high proportion of
children most at risk for future delinquency. 

Establishment of pilot programs for expanded
community schools and residential schools. These
programs and proposals, unlike the early
intervention programs discussed above, do not have
sufficient evaluation materials to suggest
replication of efforts at this time. Instead, we
recommend that well-funded and comprehensive pilot
programs be implemented for the following purposes:

o Development of comprehensive community schools
with greatly expanded hours, sessions,  and
services. Where implemented, these projects should
be run on a districtwide basis to  have maximum
impact and avoid the problem of stigmatization that
may result from  selecting only the most at-risk
children for inclusion.

o Development of well-equipped residential schools,
properly funded, staffed, and ethnically  enriched,
to act as placement alternatives for children whose
parents have had their parental  rights terminated
by court order.

Again, we must emphasize the value of properly
conducted
evaluations of pilot programs before large-scale
implementation of these proposals. There is a vast
literature regarding treatment and prevention
programs, but the number of programs that have been
adequately evaluated is minute. Therefore, we
propose the creation of a limited number of well-
funded major interventions with sufficient
provision for adequate research design and long-
term evaluation. Furthermore, we recommend that the
U.S. Department of Justice coordinate with the U.S.
Department of Education at the highest levels to
ensure that the concerns of law enforcement are not
only implemented in school curriculums, but that
the concept of early childhood intervention as a
fundamental component of law enforcement is
accepted as part of basic educational policy
nationwide. 

Conclusion

We face the 21st century with the alarming prospect
of ever-increasing juvenile and adult criminality,
the continued
disintegration of the family unit, and the
continued decay of our inner cities. Our solutions
must be as powerful and comprehensive as the
problems they address. Because even the best
prevention programs need considerable time to bear
fruit, we have no choice but to immediately upgrade
our law enforcement alternatives. Knowing full well
the ultimate futility of law enforcement for a
generation of children who lack elementary
socialization and self-control, we are nonetheless
obligated to detect and punish those who make life
intolerable for others. 

But this we know. The heart of any lastingly
effective program to reduce delinquency and
criminality and to increase the likelihood of
effective deterrence necessarily involves the
family and early childhood. Therefore, we advocate
the expansion of early childhood intervention
programs and the upgrading of Head Start. Beyond
that, programs to establish adequate out-of-home
placement (remedial residential schools and
upgraded foster-care services) and programs to
expand radically the scope of public education
should be implemented as major pilot projects. The
effectiveness of these pilot projects can
thereafter be properly evaluated so that societal
and educational policies can be intelligently
planned and implemented during the next century. 

The cost of this concept of a greatly expanded
scope of public education will be enormous, but it
is not without precedent. In the 1950's and 1960's
we Americans, recognizing the need for higher
education in our competition with the Soviet Union,
proceeded to construct one of the greatest systems
of colleges and universities in the world. Just
such an effort is needed now for the lower and
preschool grades to address the children most in
need of our protection and care. 

Notes

1. For example, homicide and manslaughter arrests
for those under 18 years of age rose 60.1 percent
from 1981 to 1990; arrests for aggravated assault
and motor vehicle theft grew over 50 percent during
the same time period. Federal Bureau of
Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United
States. 1991. Cited in Yoshikawa, H. (1994)
Prevention as Cumulative Protection; "Effects of
Early Family Support and Education on Chronic
Delinquency and its Risks," Psychological Bulletin,
vol. 115:28-54. 

2. Leitenberg, H. 1987. "Primary Prevention of
Delinquency," in Prevention of Delinquent Behavior,
Burchard and Burchard (eds.), p. 320.

3. Yoshikawa, supra, at 35.

4. Binder, A., G. Geis, and D. Bruce. 1988.
Juvenile Delinquency: Historical, Cultural and
Legal Perspectives. New York: Macmillan;
Farrington, D.P., R. Loeber, D.S. Elliot, J.D.
Hawkins, D.B. Kandel, M.W. Klein, J. McCord, D.C.
Rose, and R.E. Trembly. 1990. "Advancing Knowledge
About the Onset of Delinquency and Crime," in B.B.
Lahey and A.E. Kazdin (eds.), Advances in Clinical
Child Psychology, vol. 13:283-342. New York: Plenum
Press; Hirschi, T. 1969. The Causes of Delinquency.
Berkeley: University of California Press; and
Wilson, J.Q., and G. Loury. 1987. Families,
Schools, and Delinquency Prevention, p. vi.

5. Louber, R., and M. Stouthamer-Loeber. 1986.
"Family Factors as Correlates and Predictors of
Juvenile Conduct Problems and
Delinquency," in M. Tony and N. Morris (eds.),
Crime and Justice; An Annual Review of Research,
vol. 7:29-150. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. 

6. Basharov, D.J. 1987. "Giving the Juvenile Court
a Preschool Education," in Wilson and Loury, supra,
at 214; Wright and Wright. 1994. "A Policy Maker's
Guide to Controlling Delinquency through Family
Intervention," Justice Quarterly, vol. 11, no.
2:193; Loeber, R., and T.J. Dishion. 1983. "Early
Predictors of Male Delinquency: A Review,"
Psychological Bulletin, vol. 94 (19):68-69.

7. Cohen, P., and J. Brook. 1987. "Family Factors
Related to the Persistence of Psychopathology in
Childhood and Adolescence," Psychiatry, vol.
50:332-345; Laub, J.H., and R.J. Sampson. 1988.
"Unraveling Families and Delinquency: A Re-analysis
of the Gluecks' Data." Criminology, vol.
26:355-380.

8. Loury, G. 1987. In Wilson and Loury, supra, at
6.

9. Farrington, D.P. 1987. "Early Precursors of
Frequent Offending," in Wilson, J.Q., and G. Loury,
supra, at 27-50.

10. Wolfgang, M.E., R.M. Figlio, and T. Sellin.
1972. Delinquency in a Birth Cohort. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press; and West, D.J., and
D.P. Farrington. 1977. The Delinquent Way of Life.
New York: Crane Russak.

11. Wilson, J.Q., in Wilson and Loury, supra, at
300.

12. Rose, S.L., S.A. Rose, and Feldman. 1989.
"Stability of Behavior Problems in Very Young
Children," Development and
Psychopathology, vol. 1:5-19.

13. Zigler, E.C., Taussig, and K. Black. 1992.
"Early Childhood Intervention: A Promising
Preventative for Juvenile Delinquency," American
Psychologist, vol. 47:997-1065. 

14. Yoshikawa, supra, at 37.

15. Beruetta-Clement, J.R., L.J. Schweinhardt, W.S.
Barnett, A.S. Epstein, and D.P. Weikert. 1984.
Changed Lives: The Effects of the Perry Preschool
Program on Youths Through Age 19, Ypsilanti, MI:
High/Scope Press.

16. Johnson, D.L., and T. Walker. 1987. "Primary
Prevention of Behavior Problems in Mexican-American
Children," American Journal of Community
Psychology, vol. 15:375-385. 

17. Lally, J.R., P.L. Mangione, A.S. Honig, and
D.S. Wittner. "The Syracuse University Family
Development Research Program: Long-Range Impact of
Early Intervention with Low-Income Children and
their Families," in D.R. Powell (ed.), Annual
Advances in Applied Developmental Psychology, vol.
3:79-104, Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

18. Seitz, V., L.R. Rosenbaum, and Apfel. 1985.
"Effects of Family Support Intervention; A Ten Year
Follow-up," Child Development, vol. 56:376-391.

19. Kolvin, I., F.J.W. Miller, M. Fleeting, and
P.S. Kolvin. 1988. "Social and Parenting Factors
Affecting Criminal Offense Rates," British Journal
of Psychiatry, vol. 152:80-90; Sameroff, A.J., and
B.H. Fiese. 1990. "Transactional Regulation and
Early Intervention," S.J. Meisel and J.P. Shonkoff
(eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention,
119-149. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

20. Casto, G., and K. White. 1985. "The Efficacy of
Early Intervention Programs with Environmentally
At-Risk
Infants," in M. Frank (ed.), Infant Intervention
Programs: Truths and Untruths, 37-50, New York:
Hayworth Press.

21. Zigler, E., and N. Hall. 1987. "The
Implications of Early Intervention Efforts for the
Primary Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency," in
Wilson and Loury, supra, at 165. 

22. Wilson, J.Q., supra, at 300.

23. Zigler and Hall, supra, at 173.

24. Kazdin. 1987. "Treatment of Anti-Social
Behavior in Children, Current Status and Future
Directions," Psychological Bulletin, vol.
1022:187-203; Rutter, M., and H. Gillen. 1983.
Juvenile Delinquency; Trends and Perspectives. New
York:
Penguin Books; and Zigler, Taussig, and Black,
supra, at 997-1,006.

25. Zigler, E., and M. Finn-Stevenson. 1989. "Child
Care in America: From Problem to Solution,"
Educational Policy, vol. 3, no. 4:313-329; Weizel,
R. "Remaking Schools to Fit Families for the 21st
Century," New York Times, Feb. 13, 1994.

26. Besharov, supra, at 220.

27. Leitenberg, supra, at 323.

28. Ibid, at 319.

29. The cost of such a program remains a
contentious issue among experts, with estimates of
$20,000 to $60,000 per child per year.
"Orphanages," Newsweek, Dec. 12, 1994, p. 30. 

30. Leitenberg, supra, at 321.

31. Wright, W.E., and M.C. Dixon. 1977. "Community
Prevention and Treatment of Juvenile Delinquency: A
Review of Evaluation Studies," Journal of Research
in Crime and Delinquency, vol. 14:35-67.

------------------------------

Drug Policy Options: Lessons From Three Epidemics

Steven Belenko, New York City Criminal Justice
Agency, Co-chair Jeffrey Fagan, Rutgers University,
Co-chair

Drug Policy Options: Lessons from Three Epidemics
 
Issues

Beginning with the heroin epidemic of the 1960's
and continuing through the devastating crack
epidemic, drug crises have regularly taken center
stage in American politics and crime control
policy. Through the 1980's, the central doctrine in
U.S. drug policy has been "legalism." In this view,
drug use challenges the established social order
and moral foundations of authority. Drug policies
have emphasized criminal penalties and deterrence
over prevention and treatment as control
mechanisms. 

These drug policies have had a push-down-pop-up
effect: the more pressure applied in one place, the
more likely new problems were to arise in another.
For example, criminal sanctions for low-level crack
users have shifted resources away from treatment of
such users, whose behaviors are vectors for HIV
transmission through high-risk sexual activity. 

The lessons from decades of legalistic drug
policies suggest that deterrence strategies have
not been successful in reducing drug use.
Enforcement strategies have consumed resources,
aggravated the health risks associated with drugs,
and increased the levels of violence surrounding
drug markets. Drug policy has also increased
profits for drug sellers and attracted other young
people into selling, as the exaggerated symbols of
conspicuous consumption by dealers act as a siren
for younger people. Severe sentencing laws applied
broadly and in-discriminately have undermined,
rather than reinforced, the moral authority of the
law.
 
Policy recommendations

Policies need to focus on reducing the harmful
consequences of drug use and place criminal
penalties within a framework recognizing the scale
of drug problems. Enforcement and prosecution
should be used to disrupt mid- and upper-level
trafficking, while treatment or alternative
sanctions should be used to reduce drug demand
among offenders whose drug use has propelled them
into the criminal justice system. The cornerstone
of a new drug policy should be to increase alcohol
and drug treatment opportunities at all stages of
the criminal justice system. 

o Treatment-oriented drug courts. Continued
experimentation with treatment-oriented drug 
courts should be encouraged. A potentially powerful
model for linking the treatment/public health
system to the criminal justice  process, these
courts should continue to be developed and
evaluated for their long-term effectiveness. The
risk of unnecessarily widening the net of social
control can be minimized  through the use of
appropriate eligibility and screening criteria and
comprehensive, clinically based assessment.

o Alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment. Access to
AOD treatment and public health services should be
encouraged at all stages of the criminal justice
process. Accordingly, opportunities for effective
treatment interventions during the pretrial period,
probation-supervised treatment, treatment under a
community corrections model, and prison- or jail-
based treatment should be studied and encouraged.
All criminal-justice-based treatment services
should consider the provision of aftercare services
to provide a treatment continuum.

o Community mobilization. Communities can
effectively mobilize to disrupt drug markets  and
deter drug users. Many case studies have depicted
the benefits of community policing  with respect to
reducing the size and scope of drug markets, but
few systematic studies have  appeared that could
corroborate this effect. However, this approach
seems more likely to  support the linkage of
treatment and public health services to law
enforcement than  traditional anti-drug enforcement
approaches. 

o  Disaggregated prevention strategies. Prevention
strategies should be disaggregated  for specific
drugs and populations. They should be built from an
understanding of the  mechanisms through which
individuals acquire information about drugs and
make
decisions  about their use. The lessons of drug
epidemics are that information about drug use rules
and  dangers is spread informally from credible
sources and learned from social experiences; 
normative changes in drug use patterns are
influenced weakly by legal threats. 

o Target drug treatment. The concentration of high-
rate and -risk drug use among a  small segment of
the population suggests that treatment efforts
should be targeted to them. Many of these
individuals are in prison, and their criminality is
closely (and perhaps  causally) linked to drug
problems. Cost arguments alone make inprison
treatment a necessary part of an  overall strategy
for drug control, but the opportunity to reduce
criminality together with  drug problems is a
compelling reason for funding inmates' treatment. 

o  Alternatives to incarceration. Citing the need
to alleviate overcrowding and prioritize  prison
space for violent offenders, several governors and
State legislatures have  recommended that penal
statutes permit the sentencing of nonviolent drug
offenders to nonincarcerative punishments.
Expansion of viable alternatives to incarceration,
however,  have been stifled by fiscal restraints.
Incentives must be created to sustain States'
efforts to create alternatives, such as supervision
programs involving urinalysis, outpatient and
residential drug treatment, or health and
employment programs.

o Harm-reduction model. Treating drug addiction as
the chronic disease that it is  enables legal
institutions to achieve realistic and attainable
goals. From this perspective, a  harm reduction
model becomes the framework for policy. Myriad
forms of harm can be  addressed by selective
application of criminal "pressure" to divert users
into treatment that may eventually  return them to
families and/or employment.

o Buyer-seller interactions. Supply-side strategies
should focus on interactions between  buyers and
sellers, making drug purchases more difficult by
increasing search time for  buyers and decreasing
revenues for sellers. International interventions
and interdictions at the top of the domestic
distribution system should have  low priority
compared to point-of-sale efforts to reduce
available supplies. 

o Local concerns. Enforcement, treatment, and
health care are local matters, and  responsibility
for enforcement and funding of drug policy should
be shifted downward to  the States.

o Federal concerns. The development of knowledge,
technology, data, and information  should be
organized within a policy infrastructure at the
Federal level. 

------------------------------

Drug Policy Options: Lessons From Three Epidemics

Background

For more than 30 years, the United States has
experienced a succession of drug crises. Beginning
with the heroin epidemic of the 1960's and
continuing through the cocaine and devastating
crack epidemics of the 1980's, drug crises have
regularly taken center stage in American politics
and crime control policy. During the 1980's,
deepening public anxiety about drug problems led to
drug control choices that have taken a deep hold on
the legal and social landscape of nearly every
segment of American society. From drug testing in
the workplace to incarceration in the Nation's
overcrowded prisons, the United States has embarked
on unprecedented social experiments to control the
use of drugs. 

The central doctrine in U.S. drug policy throughout
these crises has been "legalism" (Zimring and
Hawkins, 1992). In this doctrine, drug use
challenges the established social order and the
moral foundations of authority.[1] Drug policies
have emphasized criminal penalties and deterrence
as mechanisms to control drug problems, with
prevention and treatment receiving a lower priority
and far less funding. The increased use of criminal
justice resources was designed to achieve three
interrelated aims: reduce drug demand by deterring
would-be users, reduce drug supply by disrupting
street-level markets, and reduce street violence
that is the by-product of illegal drug use. The
policy responses required low incarceration
thresholds for violations of drug laws and a high
likelihood of arrest for drug use and sales through
extensive street-level enforcement. To accomplish
this, resources were diverted from prevention and
treatment toward enforcement and incarceration.

These policy choices have been made in an
atmosphere of intense concern but often without
careful conceptual development or policy analysis.
Perhaps most importantly, we have yet to measure
the consequences and returns from the policy
choices we have made. Today, an opportunity exists
for such evaluation and rethinking of these policy
choices. Like the epidemics that preceded it, the
crack epidemic has run its natural course. The
crisis that
accompanied the onset and peak of the crack
epidemic has subsided even though significant drug
problems remain.2 There is now empirical
information and rational perspective on many policy
initiatives undertaken during the mobilization of
the past decade and also from lessons to be learned
from earlier drug crises. This allows us to
highlight those policies with promise and those
whose limits were quickly reached. It also provides
a context in which to formulate a coherent drug
policy framework where specific initiatives make
sense and where policies can synergistically
achieve meaningful reductions in drug problems.
 
Challenges to Drug Policy: What Not To Do

We frame these policy choices in the context of
several challenges that have emerged from the drug
control experiments of the past decade. The
challenges reflect the lessons learned from the
realities of drug problems and the experiences of
implementing large- scale mobilization of legal and
social resources. 

First, the experiment of mass incarceration over
the past decade suggests the limits of deterrence-
based strategies for controlling large-scale drug
problems. The sharp increases in incarceration
rates have resulted in limited success in reducing
the use or availability of drugs (see, for detailed
analyses, Kleiman, 1992; Zimring and Hawkins, 1992;
Moore, 1993; Reuter, 1991). The use of precious
criminal justice resources has not brought returns
from either market disruption or demand reduction.
The lesson of the past decade lies in recognizing
the limits of legal institutions and criminal
justice systems in dealing with drug use. Epidemics
such as the recent cocaine, crack, and heroin
epidemics suggest that societal drug problems occur
on a scale that exceeds the limited capacity of the
criminal justice system. To mobilize legal
institutions on a scale that would match these drug
crises is not practical in a complex society with
multiple policy demands and declining economic
resources. It also raises problems for the
consensus on law and the importance of fairness
(Moore, 1993; Tonry, 1995). A more realistic
strategy would recognize that effective drug
control requires reciprocity between criminal
justice and other interventions, including public
health or drug treatment.

Second, recurrent drug problems place extraordinary
burdens on police, courts, and communities. During
the 1980's, police efforts were targeted toward
mass arrests that created organizational burdens to
sustain them. Police corruption from drug
enforcement became a recurring management problem
that threatened morale and public confidence in the
police. The quality of justice in the courts was
compromised by the crush of caseloads and the
pressures to move calendars (Wisotsky, 1990;
Belenko, 1993). Prisons suffered in two ways:
overcrowding and the emergence of a new generation
of inmates that posed challenges for prison
management and security.3 Although communities
demanded increased enforcement to rid
themselves of drug dealers, many residents resented
what they perceived as the aggressive enforcement
of unfair laws that were disproportionately
targeted toward minority citizens. These policies
served to increase disrespect for and resistance to
the law among many citizens (Reuter, 1991). Judges
resisted mandatory sentencing statutes that
stripped them of their discretion in sentencing,
further undermining the public's confidence in the
same laws that drug policy was trying to reinforce.

Third, drug policy is further challenged by its
interdependency with health, crime control, and
other social policies. Drug policy often has a
push-down-pop-up effect: the more we put pressure
in one place, the more likely we are to experience
new problems in another. Thus, for example, as we
continue to limit severely the distribution of
clean syringes, we increase the health risks of HIV
transmission among intravenous heroin and cocaine
users. Or criminal sanctions for low-level crack
dealers focus resources away from treatment of
crack and cocaine users whose behaviors provide
vectors for HIV transmission through high-risk
sexual activity. Or successful interdiction of
marijuana imports encourages domestic growers to
develop higher potency crops that pose
significantly greater health threats (Kleiman,
1992).4 In contrast, the
relatively low-scale efforts to treat drug users in
the criminal  justice system exposes untreated
defendants to the risks of family disruption, poor
health outcomes, exposure to violence in illegal
drug markets, and other social deficits. For
example, one of the important policy lessons of the
past decade is that incarceration of adolescents
relegates them to a lifetime of poor job outcomes
and persistent involvement in criminality (Freeman,
1992), yet the expansion of drug enforcement
resulted in an increase in the number of young
people incarcerated and spiraling problems of crime
and unemployment. 

Fourth, drug policy debates have been competitions
between supply-side hawks and demand-reduction
doves. The hawks focus on reducing the availability
of illegal drugs on the street through
interventions up and down the distribution system.
Their arguments are buttressed by inconsistent
evidence of treatment effectiveness, the immediacy
of drug problems, and the incapacitating effects of
incarceration. Theirs is an urgent and simple
message, in contrast to the social logic of the
doves: deterrence does not work; prevention and
treatment have been underfunded; and drug problems
are social in their origins and require social
solutions. The debate has turned--and stalled--on
the question of the extent of drug use and drug
problems (Reuter, 1991). This reflects the legalism
doctrine that informs much of drug policy, where
drug use (and not its consequences) is the concern
of policymakers. However, legalistic policies have
not succeeded in reducing either drug use or drug
problems. 

When the policy focus shifts to the societal
burdens and consequences of drug use, as it has in
European countries, other policy frameworks become
possible. Specifically, alternative policy
frameworks are needed that recognize the possibly
adverse effects of legalistic drug policy and that
focus on reducing the risk of drug harm rather than
the prevalence of drug use. Policies that consider
risk shifting (from legal to social domains, from
supply side to demand side) and comparative-risk-
and-advantage analysis afford the greatest
potential for more than symbolic gains in efforts
to control drug use.

In sum, the lessons from three decades of
legalistic drug policies suggest deterrence
strategies have not been successful in reducing
drug use. In fact, their adverse effects have
intensified certain health and social risks of drug
use. There is little evidence of either general or
specific deterrent effects (Fagan, 1994; Zimring
and Hawkins, 1992; Reuter, 1991). Enforcement
strategies have consumed resources, aggravated the
health risks associated with drugs, and increased
the levels of violence surrounding drug markets.
Drug policy through the 1980's also has resulted in
increased profits for drug sellers, which have
attracted other young people into selling as the
exaggerated symbols of conspicuous consumption by
dealers act as a siren's song for younger people
(Fagan, 1992). The application of severe sentencing
laws with a broad and nondiscriminating reach have
undermined rather than reinforced the moral
authority of the law among many citizens and
judges. In the next section, we apply these lessons
to form drug policies that assign a strategic and
complementary role for criminal law and for the
Nation's legal institutions.
 
Policy Concepts

The lessons of the past decade and the legacies of
policies formed in preceding decades suggest
principles for informed policy for the future. The
burden on the criminal justice system created by
reliance on criminal sanctions for drug offenses,
together with the general consensus among criminal
justice policy- makers and practitioners that this
policy has not accomplished its goals, suggest that
new approaches must be considered and encouraged. 

First, we encourage policies that focus on reducing
the risks and harmful consequences of drug use with
an emphasis on demand-side policies to shrink
illegal drug markets. Policies should pursue
realistic and attainable goals for reducing the
harms that accrue from drug use. Criminal penalties
should be part of a broader policy framework that
recognizes the scale of drug problems. This policy
approach does not necessarily mean that enforcement
efforts should be ignored or downplayed. Instead, a
bifurcated drug policy is needed that distinguishes
among offenders in terms of their drug involvement.
Enforcement and prosecution should be used to
disrupt middle- and upper-level trafficking, while
treatment or alternative sentencing interventions
should be used to reduce drug demand among low-
level dealers with drug problems. Diversion and
referrals should focus on reduction of drug use
among offenders whose underlying drug problems have
impelled their entry into the criminal justice
system. 

Second, the inclusion of public health and other
social policies will expand the forms of social
control that can reinforce the goals of criminal
justice interventions. There is an important role
for criminal penalties, but the challenge is to use
criminal penalties strategically and reciprocally
with other interventions. Drug offenders are at
high risk for infectious disease, so
effective referral and intervention also becomes a
public health issue. The high prevalence of HIV
infection, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted
diseases, and hepatitis among criminal offenders
increases the urgency of fostering new policies
that allow broader public health interventions at
all stages of criminal justice processing. Two
other key parts of the policy equation are
education and prevention programs and increased
economic
opportunities, especially in poor urban areas.

One policy implication of this approach is that we
need to greatly improve current collaborations
between criminal justice and alcohol and other drug
(AOD) treatment systems. This includes both
increased opportunities for collaboration as well
as making such interactions more effective and
meaningful. We recognize that important steps in
this direction have already been taken, as
illustrated by the recent development of treatment
diversion drug courts. However, the number of drug-
involved offenders entering drug courts is a very
small proportion of those in need of AOD treatment.
There is a growing need, already recognized by the
U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, to seek collaborative
efforts, multidisciplinary approaches, and
meaningful community involvement to address long-
term problems of crime and substance abuse with
more effective solutions. This will require a shift
in the allocation of criminal justice system
resources away from harmful or counterproductive
policies, such as the imprisonment of nonviolent
drug abusers or low-level drug sellers, toward
strategies with greater
effectiveness and long-term impact on drug abuse.
It will be necessary to implement sometimes
politically sensitive shifts in resources in favor
of such interventions as AOD treatment programs,
diversion, and alternatives to incarceration and
away from law enforcement, prison, and jail for
drug-involved nonviolent
offenders. Experience has shown that there is
consistent, broad public support for AOD treatment
for these types of offenders as well as strong
support in the law enforcement and judicial
communities. 

The cornerstone of a new drug policy that can more
effectively break the drug-crime cycle is the
increase in AOD treatment opportunities at all
stages of the criminal justice system. Although
some offenders can reduce or eliminate their drug
use without treatment, most need some sort of
external pressure to enter and remain in treatment.
We know that sanctions in and of themselves will
not reduce drug-related crime, nor will punitive
sanctions deter drug sales or drug use. It is a
basic principle of human behavior that punishment
by itself will not change behavior; opportunities
and rewards for competing prosocial behaviors must
be offered. Treatment drug courts recognize this
principle, and this may account for their apparent
success in channeling offenders into treatment.

Finally, a realistic, effective, and balanced
approach should not be hampered by inflexible and
punitive laws that limit the ability of prosecutors
and judges to allow treatment interventions.
Accordingly, we recommend against mandatory minimum
sentences for nonviolent drug-involved offenders
with a concomitant increase in prosecutorial and
judicial discretion.
 
Policy Options 

Demand Reduction Strategies

Since 1980, drug laws have been used as the primary
mechanism for demand reduction among drug users.
Moral injunction and deterrence inform this
perspective. However, the inelasticity of demand in
the face of mass incarceration of drug offenders
suggests that
alternative methods of demand reduction be
considered. One of the reasons for recommending a
policy emphasis on demand reduction is the growing
evidence that the marginal (formal) deterrence
effects of criminal penalties are small. Instead,
we recommend strategies that focus on the
(informal) mechanisms by which individuals reduce
their drug use.

Move ahead with experiments on drug courts.
Continued
experimentation with treatment-oriented drug courts
should be encouraged. These courts arose out of
local, grassroots frustration with the inability of
prevailing punitive anti-drug policies to reduce
drug-related crime. They are also part of important
trends in the criminal courts: the shifting roles
of court participants; a changing view of offenders
as individuals requiring individual attention
rather than simply as criminal cases; a
multidisciplinary, case-management approach to
responding to offenders; and increased community
involvement and sensitivity toward community
concerns in the court process. The drug courts
reflect a broader, longer range approach to drug-
related crime, emphasizing the solution of
underlying problems rather than just the repeated
punishment of criminal acts. They represent a
potentially powerful model for linking the
treatment and public health systems to the criminal
justice process, and continued development and
evaluation of their long-term effectiveness should
be strongly encouraged by the Federal Government.

One potential downside to treatment drug courts and
other diversion or alternative sentencing programs
is the risk of unnecessarily widening the net of
social control. Like any intervention strategy, the
focus should be on those individuals who will be
most responsive to interventions. This risk can be
minimized through appropriate eligibility and
screening criteria along with
comprehensive and clinically based assessment for
underlying drug problems and jail-boundness. 

Minimize harm: Improve linkages with drug treatment
and public health and make treatment the first
resort. Access to AOD treatment and public health
services should be encouraged at all stages of the
criminal justice process. Accordingly,
opportunities for effective treatment interventions
during the pretrial period, probation-supervised
treatment, treatment under a community corrections
model, and prison- or jail-based treatment should
be studied and encouraged. Finally, all criminal-
justice-based treatment services should consider
the provision of aftercare services to provide a
continuum of treatment and other services following
release from jail or prison after criminal justice
supervision has ended. 

Capitalize on communities. There are strong
conceptual and
practical reasons to invest in communities as a
form of drug control, and growing evidence that
communities can effectively mobilize to disrupt
drug markets and deter drug users (Currie, 1993).5 

Community policing has received much attention and
support in recent years, and the police-community
relationship is a critical issue in drug policy.
There are many case studies that illustrate the
benefits of community policing with respect to
reducing the size and scope of drug markets, but
few systematic studies.6 Although evidence of its
effect on reducing the demand for drugs and its
impact on the criminal justice system is still not
available, this approach seems to be more likely to
support the linkage of treatment and public health
services to law enforcement than traditional anti-
drug enforcement approaches that rely on undercover
narcotics officers to disrupt street drug markets.

Get serious about prevention. More research is
needed about how to make prevention and education
effective. Prevention should be disaggregated for
specific drugs and specific populations.
Prevention strategies should be built from our
understanding of the mechanisms through which
individuals acquire information about drugs and
make decisions about their use. Scary messages
about the harms of drugs from noncredible sources
are not effective for a heterogeneous population of
current and would-be drug users.7 Instead, the
lessons of drug epidemics since the 1960's are
that: (1) information about the dangers and rules
of drug use are spread informally from credible
sources, (2) the dangers of drug use are learned
from direct or indirect but social (not legal)
experiences, and (3) normative changes in drug use
patterns are influenced weakly by legal threats.
Prevention experiments are sorely needed, as is the
political "time" to see these experiments through
to their conclusion. These should be disaggregated
by age, social location, and type of drug.

Expand drug treatment in prisons. The concentration
of high-rate and high-risk drug use among a small
segment of the population suggests that
concentrated treatment efforts should be targeted
at this population. Many high-rate, high-risk drug
users are in prison, and their criminality is
closely (and perhaps causally) linked to drug
problems. The cost arguments alone make treatment a
necessary part of an overall strategy for drug
control, but opportunities to reduce criminality
together with drug problems makes in-prison
treatment a strong candidate for funding. There is
limited but growing evidence of potential gains
from this 
approach. Serious experimentation and research are
needed to build a social technology that relies on
the "push" of criminal sanctions to make gains in
treatment.

Fund alternatives to incarceration. Several
governors and State legislatures, most notably New
York and Florida, have started to rethink the
policy of mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug
offenders. Citing the need to alleviate
overcrowding and prioritize prison space for
violent offenders, they have recommended that penal
code statutes permit the sentencing of nonviolent
drug offenders to nonincarcerative punishments.
However, judges are likely to resist
nonincarcerative sentences when the alternatives
are weak. That is the case as fiscal limits negate
the expansion of alternatives to incarceration
(ATI) beyond their current small scale. These vary
widely and can meet the supervision and treatment
needs of a wide range of drug offenders. Any
serious effort to avoid the adverse (expensive)
consequences of incarceration will need a network
of viable alternative sentencing options. 

One way to achieve the shifting of funds to ATI
programs is to provide incentives for local
government to create and fill these programs.
Subsidy programs, created decades ago as mechanisms
to avoid "dumping" of offenders by local
governments into State facilities, were successful
in a number of jurisdictions that were intent on
reducing their prison populations. States typically
set a maximum for each county and awarded funds
from a community corrections pool to localities on
a prorated basis for the number of prison remands
below the maximum. The subsidies often were used to
establish community corrections programs or to
enhance probation services. The same logic can be
applied in the current context to support intensive
supervision programs involving urinalysis,
outpatient or residential drug treatment, and
programs that address health or employment
concerns. If the excessive use of
incarceration for drug offenders is to be
discontinued, incentives must be created to sustain
the efforts of States to create and utilize
alternatives to incarceration. 

Reduce the harms from drug use. The focus on
deterrence of drug use has left untouched spreading
health harms caused by illegal drug use. Drug
addiction is a chronic disease, albeit neither an
infectious nor a contagious one. It should be
treated from the perspective of chronic disease,
helping us to achieve a set of realistic and
attainable policy goals that focus on isolating
causal dynamics and risk factors and to develop
appropriate interventions. There is little evidence
that drug addiction can be deterred through the
threat of legal sanctions, and policies that make
punishment the first resort set unrealistic and
unachievable goals. An approach rooted in the
reduction of the harms and public health risks of
drug use will place legal institutions in a role
where they are no longer burdened with unachievable
missions. Thus containment of the harms of drug
use, while strategically
intervening on problematic drug use, is the essence
of a harm-reduction model that can become a
framework for policy.

Several communities with extensive heroin abuse
problems have experimented successfully with needle
exchanges to control the spread of HIV infection.
Using careful criteria based on need, policies
encouraging needle exchange help address the harms
of drug use while providing opportunities to
control use itself through referrals. Similarly,
encouraging women users to seek medical care while
pregnant (instead of threatening them with
incarceration) will identify soon-to-be newborns at
risk for low birth weight and other birth defects.
These children, who grow up at risk for delinquency
and violence, also are at risk for in utero
addiction and addiction at birth. There are myriad
other forms of harm that can be addressed by the
selective application of criminal
"pressure." Examples include the diversion of users
into treatment to encourage their eventual return
to their families and employment to encourage users
to pursue lower-risk forms of drug use that
minimize health and social harms.

Supply reduction strategies. Drug laws also have
been used to reduce the supply of illegal drugs to
consumers, to increase their street price, and to
limit their availability to the average consumer.
Supply-side policies have been implemented at all
levels of the distribution chain, from production
in foreign countries through importation and
distribution systems involving wholesalers and
street retailers. Supply-side policy assumes that
both prices and demand for illegal drugs are
elastic. The set of strategies that make up supply-
side policy attempts to achieve marginal reductions
in the price and availability of drugs, and the
effects of these efforts, are enough to discourage
at least some drug use. 

The record from these efforts has been decidedly
mixed. There have been successes either in reducing
availability or increasing prices, but these gains
have been short-lived. The reductions were
temporary or small. For example, the number of
heroin addicts in the United States has remained
steady at about 250,000 people for nearly two
decades after peaking at 500,000 people in the
early 1970's. Drug epidemics come and go. There is
little reliable evidence about street prices or the
amount of drugs consumed to  allow us to attribute
drug-market behaviors to supply-side
policies, but we should question the effectiveness
of supply-side policies if drug consumption does
not decline following their implementation (Moore,
1993).

However, supply-side policy must continue to be
part of drug policy. There are several policy
questions to be addressed in determining how best
to use policy options on this side. First is the
decision about where on the supply chain market
disruption tactics should be focused. If demand is
inelastic relative to price, there can be little
justification for supply-side policies, but this is
a narrow view in many regards. While inelasticity
claims may be true for addicts, they may not be
true for irregular consumers whose market behavior
is more rationally oriented. Inelasticity also
suggests that there are purely econometric effects
on prices and, therefore, on consumer behavior. It
is more likely that supply-side interventions will
influence other dimensions of consumer behaviors
and decisions, such as risk assessment and search
time. We attend to these possibilities by
suggesting the wise use of police resources to
change market dynamics (apart from prices). 

Where to intervene. Until recently, there was
little differentiation in supply reduction policies
regarding point of distribution. There is a complex
and flexible distribution system for drugs that
involves producers, transporters, importers,
wholesalers, and local distribution networks.
However, current efforts to interdict imports are
indistinguishable in their priority from efforts to
increase arrests of low-level drug dealers. This
makes no sense, and priorities must be set.
Policies targeted toward producers outside the
United States are high-cost, low-payoff ideas. The
production of drugs is a
political, economic phenomenon that is not easily
amenable to intervention. Like domestic supply-side
interventions, there are questions of scale that
are not easily addressed through periodic crop
destruction or disruption of remote processing 
facilities.8 In this country, supply reduction
tends to drive street prices slightly up. Because
heroin and cocaine demand seems to be somewhat
inelastic, supply reduction will cause an increase
in street crimes (necessary to sustain drug
consumption) and an increase in dealer revenues. A
more lucrative market will continue to expand as
newcomers are attracted to what appears to be a
profitable market. Accordingly, policies that
involve international interventions should receive
a low priority. 

Similarly, efforts to locate and convict various
"Mr. Bigs" in cities throughout the United States
have high costs relative to payoffs. Drug
indicators suggest the intractability of imports
and domestic supplies to such domestic
interdictions, despite widely spaced, highly
publicized seizures. So-called "kingpins" (and,
increasingly, "queenpins") are quickly replaced by 
individuals within their own organizations if not
by competitors. Nevertheless, there is an important
symbolic value in efforts to interdict supplies
overseas, at the borders, and at the upper levels
of the distribution chain. These efforts reinforce
the illegality of drug use, express intolerance for
drug dealing, and reassure a public still anxious
about drugs that efforts continue to disrupt supply
systems. 

The priority assigned to international
interventions and interdictions at the upper levels
of the domestic distribution system should be low
relative to point-of-sale efforts to reduce
supplies available to users. 

The principle driving the decision about where to
focus supply-side policies should address the
simultaneity of supply and demand factors. While
interdictions tend to increase prices for a short
period of time, demand remains constant even when
prices fluctuate (Warner, 1993).9 Demand is
inelastic with respect to price, but not with
respect to other factors that we might call the
"buying context." We suggest instead that supply-
side interventions focus on consumer markets and
market interactions. This does not mean that we
encourage street-level crackdowns aimed at jailing
drug retailers. Crackdowns involving mass arrest
have time-limited effects on drug selling (Vera
Institute, 1992; Tonry, 1995). They simply shift
buyers and sellers from neighborhood to
neighborhood and clog the courts and compromise the
quality of justice for both prosecution and
defense. Often, crackdowns may simply drive markets
indoors, out of the public eye, but with little
lasting effect on consumer behavior.

Supply-side strategies should focus on interactions
between buyers and sellers, making drug purchases
more difficult by increasing search time for buyers
and decreasing revenues for sellers. 

We suggest that supply-side strategies focus on
disrupting local markets, ensuring that they do not
become institutionalized so that customers can
regard them as a consumer convenience. When drugs
are part of the marketplace where consumer
interactions take place, the markets enjoy the
ordinary economic protections of consumer behavior.
Demand is constant and encourages a supply chain.
But when markets are disrupted and unstable,
consumers must endure a variety of inconveniences
that increase the intangible costs of drugs.
Strategies that encourage local market disruption
should focus less on criminal enforcement than on
using police to establish obstacles to consumers
wishing to make purchases. This requires a detailed
knowledge of the features of drug markets that
encourage or discourage buying and which of these
features can be modified to reduce harmful
consequences if not actual use. This strategy is
highly localized, with immediate payoffs focused on
supplier-consumer interactions. 

Who should intervene? The second question concerns
the allocation between Federal and local policing
in carrying out supply-side drug controls. The key
issues involve the allocation of responsibility for
setting policy, paying for it, and carrying it out.
These decisions also occur in the context of
political concerns about the extent of government
in local crime control policy and about how to
effectively spend a shrinking supply of Federal
dollars. 

Large-scale Federal block grant programs have short
lives and ultimately few lasting effects on policy,
programs, or the problems they are intended to
resolve. Their impacts are diffuse and uneven. One
of their primary failings is that they do not
create cumulative knowledge that can lead to
informed and well-evaluated policies or strategies.
However, the creation of a policy infrastructure
with carefully defined missions can influence
policy in a lasting way (Zimring and Hawkins,
1992). Despite the current talk about block grants
to diversify and localize funding decisions,
history is clear that block grants come and go, and
they have had shorter and shorter half-lives since
the 1960's. The lessons of the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration teach us much about the
limits of block grants, whether to States or
localities. 

The responsibility for enforcement and funding of
drug policy should be shifted downward to the
States. The development of knowledge, technology,
data, and information should be organized within a
policy infrastructure at the Federal level.

Laws are enforced locally, drug users are treated
locally, and health problems are addressed locally.
There is diversity in the nature of drug problems
within and across States. This suggests a shifting
of responsibility downward together with funding.
What then should the Federal Government do? The
Government should conduct test marketing of ideas
and strategies through experimentation, disseminate
systematic knowledge, coordinate technology, and
ensure that information is standardized, accurate,
and up-to-date. From this foundation of knowledge,
effective policies can be fashioned. 

A Research Agenda

The research agenda involves the careful testing of
these policy options, including initiatives in the
following four areas: 

o Analyzing harm reduction strategies and careful
testing using systemic  models.

o Conducting policy experiments on drug courts and
"true" diversion models. 

o Improving treatment and criminal justice
linkages.

o Understanding consumer behavior in drug markets.

Experimentation is critically important. Drug
policy has been made in its absence, yet its
importance for the wise expenditure of scarce funds
is obvious. We encourage the replication of the
current experiments on the District of Columbia
Drug Court, as well as treatment experiments and
other research efforts that carefully test policy
assumptions. Consumer research is also important.
Understanding the social and psychological
processes that give rise to maturation and
desistance from drug use should inform the design
of policy. 

Research should help set attainable goals for drug
policy. To avoid setting unrealistic goals is
critically important for maintaining the integrity
and moral authority of legal institutions, for
their failure to control drug problems has raised
serious criticisms with constitutional
implications. This is a lesson of the past three
decades and a problem we can avoid with some
political will.   
Notes

1. The Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) strategy represents trends and assumptions
that have informed drug policy nationwide for more
than two decades. By stating drug problems in moral
terms, or mala in se (Hughes, 1983), drug use and
selling were defined as dual problems of legal
transgressions. First, the strategy developed by
ONDCP (1989) assumed that all drugs are bad and
that none is more dangerous than another. Taking or
selling illegal drugs is a socially deviant act
whose social and health consequences are
sufficiently harmful to merit State control and
intervention. Second, since drugs are illegal,
taking or selling them undermines the law, and by
extension, the social order of laws. This position
is termed "legalism" by Zimring and Hawkins (1992),
who distinguish it from other views that are more
functional regarding the public health and
econometric (cost-benefit) consequences of drugs. 

2. A core of high-rate cocaine and crack users
remains active, while the prevalence of casual
hard-drug use has declined. Drug use declined
dramatically in the 1980's, according to the
National Institute on Drug Abuse. The number of
users of any illegal drug dropped by 37 percent,
from 23 million in 1985 to 14 million in 1988. The
FBI's Uniform Crime Reports show that homicides,
many of them related to drug transactions, peaked
in 1991 but have declined steadily since then.
However, the percentage of arrestees testing
positive for cocaine or heroin has remained steady
at the high rates first reached in the mid-1980's
(Kleiman, 1992; Zimring and Hawkins, 1992). At the
same time, the high rates of lethal violence that
accompanied the emergence of crack markets a decade
ago have now subsided. There are indications of the
re-emergence of heroin as a popular addictive drug,
but the prevalence of heroin among arrestees and in
emergency room admission remains low compared with
cocaine (Kleiman, 1992). Rates of marijuana use
among adolescents have increased slightly since
their lowest points in the
mid-1980's, while alcohol remains the most
persistent problem among psychoactive substances
for both adults and adolescents (National Institute
on Drug Abuse, 1994).

3. Many policies actually worsened the problems
they intended to solve. For example, over half the
admissions to California prisons in 1988 were
technical parole violations of parolees who tested
positive for illegal drugs (Messinger, 1990, cited
in Zimring and Hawkins, 1992). Formal punishments
were limited to incarceration or virtually nothing,
as the public demanded (and received) the most
extreme forms of punishment for drug offenders. As
a result, the  availability of treatment and
rigorous forms of community
supervision declined as funds shifted toward case
processing and the incarceration of drug offenders.

4. It is not clear whether the carcinogens in the
domestic crop are greater than in the imports.
However, head shop bans have shifted smoking from
products using water filtration to rolled joints.
But water dissolved most of the carcinogenic
material from marijuana cigarettes, material that
is ingested in its rolled form. See Kleiman, 1992.

5. There is a wide variety of citizen initiatives
that illustrate this point. Groups operating within
neighborhoods have used a wide range of tactics to
address drug problems. Perhaps most interesting is
that the tactics almost always involve
strengthening the communities by dealing with
problems beyond those of drugs. The collaboration
of communities and police is a common theme in
these efforts. Communities turned to police to
address both the immediate problems of drug markets
and other criminogenic conditions in their
neighborhoods, but the groups also addressed
political problems such as the availability of
health services, recreation, and housing problems
to reduce the risks of drug use and dealing in
their areas. 

6. The evaluation of Chicago's community policing
experiment will provide systematic evidence of its
effects on drug crimes and other offenses.

7. Evaluations of the Nation's largest effort, the
Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program,
shows limited effectiveness as do other evaluations
of prevention programs that use law enforcement
officers as
deliverers of anti-drug messages. See, for example,
Rosenbaum et al., 1994.

8. The growing and refinery areas within producing
countries are not often subject to civil authority,
and domestic interdictions within those areas risk
civil unrest. Moreover, drug incomes have become
institutionalized in the economies and political
interests of many producer nations, and U.S.
dollars funneled to foreign authorities to suppress
exports become easy plunder for corrupt officials.
See, for example, Edmundo Morales, Cocaine: White
Gold Rush in Peru (1989) for an idea of the scale
and institutionalization of the drug economies of a
producer nation that is intricately tied to
international distribution networks.

Peter Reuter has observed that drug policy
complicates our foreign policy. In the 1980's, U.S.
relations with Pakistan focused on the Soviet
presence in neighboring Afghanistan. Efforts to
control opium production were compromised by higher
policy priorities assigned to containing Soviet
militarism. Policies designed to reduce heroin and
marijuana production in Mexico have failed to stem
either production or transshipments within that
country, and they have increased the power of
traffickers and their influence on Mexico's
domestic politics.

9. We really should say here "to the best of our
knowledge." The data problems in cocaine prices at
either the retail or wholesale level are quite
significant. Prices vary across cities and time,
and because import figures and seizure data are
likely to be distorted, price estimates should be
viewed cautiously.
 
References

Belenko, Steven, 1993, Crack and the Evolution of
Anti-Drug Policy. Greenwich, CT: Greenwood Press.

Currie, Eliot, 1993, Reckoning: Drugs, the Cities,
and the American Future. New York: Hill and Wang.

Fagan, Jeffrey, 1992, "Drug selling and illicit
income in
distressed neighborhoods: The economic lives of
street-level drug users and dealers." In Drugs,
Crime and Social Isolation: Barriers to Urban
Opportunity, edited by A.V. Harrell and G.E.
Peterson. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

_____1994, "Do criminal sanctions deter drug
offenders?" In Drugs and Criminal Justice:
Evaluating Public Policy Initiatives, edited by D.
MacKenzie and C. Uchida. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Freeman, Richard B., 1992, "Crime and the economic
status of disadvantaged young men." In Urban Labor
Markets and Job
Opportunity, edited by G.E. Peterson and W. Vroman.
Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

Hughes, Graham, 1983, "The concept of crime." In
The Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, edited by S.
Kalish. New York: MacMillan. 

Kleiman, Mark A.R., 1992, Against Excess: Drug
Policy for Results. New York: Basic Books.

Moore, Mark H., 1993, "Drugs, law and justice." In
Confronting Drug Policy: Illicit Drugs in a Free
Society, edited by R. Bayer and G.M. Oppenheimer.
New York: Cambridge University Press.

Morales, Edmundo, 1989, Cocaine: White Gold Rush in
Peru. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press.

Office of National Drug Control Policy, 1989,
National Drug Control Strategy. Washington, DC: The
White House.

Reuter, Peter, 1991, "On the consequences of
toughness." In Searching for Alternatives: Drug-
Control Policy in the United States, edited by M.B.
Krauss and E.P. Lazear. Stanford, CA: Hoover Press.

Rosenbaum, Dennis P., Robert Flewelling, S.L.
Bailey, C.L. Ringwalt and Deanna L. Wilkinson,
1994, "Cops in the Classroom: A
Longitudinal 

Evaluation of Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(DARE)." Journal of Research in Crime and
Delinquency 31: 3-31.

Sviridoff, Michelle, Susan Sadd, Rick Curtis, and
Randolph Grinc, 1992, "The Neighborhood Effects of
Street-Level Drug Enforcement," Final Report,
National Institute of Justice Grant 89-IJ-CX-0056.
New York: Vera Institute. 

Tonry, Michael, 1995, Malign Neglect. New York:
Oxford University Press.

Warner, Kenneth E., 1993, "Legalizing drugs:
Lessons from (and about) economics." In Confronting
Drug Policy: Illicit Drugs in a Free Society,
edited by R. Bayer and G.M. Oppenheimer. New York:
Cambridge University Press.

Wisotsky, Steven, 1990, Beyond the War on Drugs
(2nd edition). Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Zimring, Franklin E., and Gordon Hawkins, 1992, The
Search for Rational Drug Control Policy. New York:
Cambridge University Press.

------------------------------
 
Drugs and the Community

Coramae Richey Mann, Indiana University, Chair
Leon Pettiway, Indiana University
Ralph Weisheit, Illinois State University

Drugs and the Rural Community 
 
Issues

Although it has been relatively ignored in research
and policy, the issue of illegal drugs in rural
America is considered among the most pressing
problems facing rural police. Illicit rural drug
activities include consumption, production, and
transshipment. 

Overall, rural and urban youths are equally likely
to be drug users, but cocaine and crack cocaine use
is generally lower in rural areas, whereas the use
of inhalants and stimulants is higher.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that the link
between drug use and violence is weaker in rural
areas than in cities (rural areas have
substantially less violent crime--except for
domestic violence, for which urban and rural rates
are about equal). Data indicate that alcohol use is
a much greater problem in rural areas, and driving
under the influence (DUI) is a serious rural
problem, with the arrest rate double that in urban
areas.

An estimated 25-50 percent of the marijuana
consumed in the U.S. is domestically grown, and
nearly all commercial marijuana production is
rural. Clandestine labs for producing
methamphetamines and designer drugs are also
commonly set up in rural areas, where strong fumes
are less likely to be detected. Rural areas are
often key transshipment points for drugs: rural
highway interdictions have led to large seizures,
safe houses for storing smuggled drugs are often
set up in rural areas, and smugglers take advantage
of the many isolated air strips set up for
corporate farms. 

Rural areas generally have much lower arrest rates,
perhaps by as much as a factor of four. Greater
informal control and closer social networks may
serve to limit or suppress the misbehavior and
criminality that often accompany drug use, and they
may also encourage police to deal with minor drug
violators informally. Rural police usually have
fewer resources, including less manpower and less
support, which may restrict their ability to 
respond proactively to drug-related problems. These
features of the rural environment present special
problems that cannot be addressed by urban
solutions. 

Policy recommendations

o Community-specific policies. Wide variations
among rural communities (e.g., in wealth, 
geographic isolation, or population density) in
different parts of the U.S. raise questions  about
the wisdom of developing blanket national policies
for uniform application. 

o Prevention programs. Although research has
correctly questioned the effectiveness of  existing
prevention programs, they should be continued in
rural areas, at least in the short  run. No
alternative programs exist that are demonstrably
superior in preventing youth drug  use, and the
public demands that some action be taken against
the problem. The programs  also improve
communication between schools, police, and students
in rural areas. In the  long run, programs like
Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), which
build bridges  between the police and schools,
might be modified to include other groups, such as 
treatment centers, civic organizations, and
churches. Prevention programs should capitalize  on
and reinforce the closer ties among
individuals and groups that characterize many rural

communities.

o Reduced Federal presence. Policies that require
direct Federal involvement in enforcement  should
be approached with caution. Rural citizens and
police often view Federal authorities  with
suspicion, and Federal authorities are often not
fully aware of the nuances of the local  culture.
More promising approaches are those that facilitate
cooperative efforts between  local and Federal
authorities, or those in which Federal authorities
serve to support locally  directed actions.

o Rural task forces. Short-term actions should
include continued Federal support for rural  task
forces, which have proven valuable as a way to
combine the expertise and knowledge  of the 
 local police with the technical skills and
resources of other local police, State police, and 
Federal authorities. Task forces may also provide
an avenue for facilitating improved  relations
between rural (i.e., local) police and both State
and Federal authorities. An  examination should be
made of why small departments are not more actively
involved in  task forces, since their size and
budgets would make participation especially
valuable. 

o Resource sharing. Resource sharing among police
agencies in rural areas and between rural agencies
and others at the State and Federal levels should
be facilitated, in the short term. Assistance in
locating special equipment  would enhance rural
drug enforcement efforts; as a long-term measure,
an office to provide  this help should be
established.

o Training. In 1994, the State and Local Training
Division of the Federal Law Enforcement  Training
Center (FLETC) used input from rural police to
develop a training program for  rural drug
enforcement. The program's content is excellent,
but getting the training to rural  police is
extremely difficult because of cost and a shortage
of officers to provide shift  coverage for those
who leave for training. FLETC's "train the trainer"
approach to rural  drug enforcement training is
probably the best that can be done at present. 

o Training delivery. However, a system is needed
for more directly taking training to rural  areas.
One option is to utilize the extensive network of
community colleges found in many  States. Community
colleges are linked through electronic networks,
making it possible to  send training out to
relatively remote areas from a central location.
The Federal Government  could provide 
assistance in resolving the technical issues of
delivery, and FLETC could play an important  role
in helping States develop, implement, and update
training tailored to the unique rural 
circumstances of each State.

Drugs and the Urban Community 
 
Issues

Involvement in the illicit drug underclass has a
wide-ranging negative impact on inner-city
neighborhoods. The subculture demonstrates a set of
values, beliefs, lifestyles, and behavioral norms
that devalue legitimate means of earning money and
embrace self-serving manipulation, the "fast life,"
and the use of
violence. With the emergence of crack, the more
stable organized crime groups that had been
responsible for the distribution of heroin and
cocaine gave way to independent, low-level crack
sellers. Driven by high profits, crack distribution
escalated in neighborhoods that experienced social
and economic deprivation. Within these inner-city
neighborhoods, crack distribution networks operate
in a fluid market economy that allows freelance
crack distributors to sell crack with minimal
investment capital, street sellers to switch
suppliers easily and control their own work
schedules, and violence to flourish as a growing
army of young urban crack sellers compete to
protect their economic interests.

Law enforcement efforts to reduce drug use have
been directed at identifying and convicting those
individuals at the top of the vertical hierarchy of
major drug distribution groups, in the belief that
such a strategy would make it more difficult for
consumers to locate drugs of choice. Thus, prices
would increase, and consumption would be driven
downward. Police crackdowns, whether sweeping or
focused, are an alternative strategy aimed at
making it more difficult to carry out drug
transactions and frustrating participants at all
levels of the drug distribution system. However,
available research shows that the extent of drug
trafficking and the crime, violence, and
lawlessness associated with drugs in the inner
cities have not diminished despite
increasingly punitive local, State, and Federal
Government
interventions and social control. On the contrary,
these social troubles have increased, in the midst
of an ever-escalating and costly "war on drugs."

For the most part, inner-city communities house
many African-American and Hispanic residents whose
populations have been replenished (since the flight
of middle-class professional and working-class
blacks from ghetto communities) by poorer, younger
newcomers from rural areas. These late arrivals
were born at a time when structural shifts in the
economy resulted in the relocation of manufacturing
industries outside the central city, a bifurcation
into high- and low-wage income sectors, and
dramatic technological innovation. These shifts,
coupled with the exodus of those who provided
stability and helped to reinforce societal 
values and norms, have caused inner-city
communities to experience increased joblessness and
a decline in basic institutions that have led to
social disorganization. 

Policy recommendations 

o Economic and social context. Drug research, and
the policy stemming from it, should  account for
the connection between the economic and social
environments into which many  drug users are born.
Drug use and drug addiction are tied to structural
conditions that help  to create a self-perpetuating
cycle of pathology, which must be viewed and
addressed  holistically.

o Community-based programs. Drug and crime
intervention should concentrate on chronic  heroin,
cocaine, and injection drug users. Arrest brings
many users into contact with the  criminal justice
system; this contact should be used to detect and
assess drug use and  present treatment options.
Arrestees who test positive for substance abuse
should be placed  in treatment while detained.
Therefore, community-based sentencing and
intervention  programs should be considered, rather
than jail or prison, for drug
abuse/possession charges. 

o Mandatory treatment. Chronic abusers who are
sentenced to jail or prison should be  compelled to
enroll in treatment programs. Once these offenders
have been released on  probation or parole, legal
supervision should be lengthy to reduce the
likelihood of 
recidivism, and community-based treatment should be
required. 

o Treatment evaluation. To determine treatment
needs, an evaluation of the extent of  criminal
involvement should be made; research indicates that
the longer an individual  remains in a treatment
program, the greater the continuity of care, and
the greater the  likelihood of successful
employment and reduced drug- and crime-related
activities. 

o Media and school strategies. Although gains have
been made through the use of mass  media campaigns,
informational lectures, and denouncements made by
celebrity role models,  drug prevention programs
must recognize that young people are impulsive,
have  undeveloped self-esteem, have peer-centered
lives, and are easily seduced by the streets and 
the promise of quick and easy money. In some inner-
city school settings, "resistance skills  training"
teaches students how to recognize and cope with
peer pressure, thereby improving  their social
competency. Additional evaluated experimental
projects should be conducted to  determine the
effectiveness of this psychosocial strategy
designed to discourage drug use. 

o Geographically focused enforcement. Community-
based surveys of drug locations should  be
conducted to identify the nature of drug markets
and the way that abusers utilize them.  Once
identified, the activity of drug markets can be
investigated in terms of the  convergence of
consumers and sellers in space and time. In this
way, it would be possible  to realistically depict
the drug distribution patterns in urban areas and
identify specific  places of ongoing drug activity
for intervention.

o Root cause strategy. Consideration should be
given to a drug strategy aimed at  ameliorating
those conditions that give rise to drug use in the
inner city, namely, a strategy  that emphasizes
education, job training, psychological support
systems, and drug prevention.  Joblessness is a
fundamental problem that must be addressed, and
assistance with child  support programs, child care
strategies, family allowance programs, and
parenting skills  training is needed to improve the
overall life chances of children.

Drugs and the Community

Public perception, scholarly research, and public
policy often equate the drug problem with urban
problems. Similarly, an
erroneous nexus between citizens of color and the
U.S. drug problem is frequently made by average
Americans, politicians, and
government officials. An examination of the most
recent Uniform Crime Reports indicates, however,
that among suburban arrestees for drug abuse
violations in 1993, 71.5 percent were white, while
the comparable white proportion of rural arrestees
for such offenses was 75.9 percent. In contrast,
whites made up 56 percent of city arrestees for
drug abuse violations in 1993. 

Knowledge about suburban and rural drug issues is
sparse, but the available evidence suggests that
drugs are a serious concern in rural areas. Many
rural drug problems are identical to those in urban
communities. It also appears that unique features
of the rural environment present special problems
that cannot be solved by urban solutions. Further,
urban and rural areas feed each other's drug
problems. Drugs flow from cities into the
countryside, but they also flow from the
countryside into cities. Thus, this discussion is
focused on drugs in rural and urban communities. 

Findings of Existing Research

The Rural Community

There is a tremendous volume of research on illicit
drug issues, but only a very small portion of that
research includes rural communities. The existing
research on rural drug problems is particularly
interesting considering that rural communities have
substantially lower rates of crime, including
violent crime, than urban areas. 

Drug use. Most studies that compare rural and urban
drug use rates are based on adolescent samples. In
general, rural and urban youths are equally likely
to be drug users, but there are some differences in
the types of drugs used. Cocaine and crack-cocaine
use is generally lower in rural areas, but the use
of inhalants and stimulants is higher than in urban
areas. The press has suggested that such drugs as
crack are making their way into rural areas, but it
is still too early to verify that this happens with
enough frequency to be of special concern.

Evidence is only circumstantial, but it is likely
that the link between drug use and violence is
weaker in rural areas than in cities. While urban
and rural rates of drug use are similar, rural
areas have substantially less violent crime--except
for domestic violence, for which urban and rural
rates are about equal. Teachers and students in
rural schools report similar or even greater drug
problems in their schools than teachers and
students in urban schools, but in rural schools
they consistently report less violence.

Finally, while the rates of illegal drug use may be
comparable across urban and rural areas, data from
a variety of sources suggest that alcohol use is a
much greater problem in rural areas. The greater
use of alcohol, combined with the distances to be
traveled and the lack of public transportation,
also mean that driving under the influence (DUI) is
a serious rural problem, with the arrest rate about
double that in urban areas.

Drug production, trafficking, and transshipment.
Drugs are not only consumed in rural areas, they
are often produced there. It is estimated that
25-50 percent of the marijuana consumed in the
United States is domestically grown. While it is
possible to set up large marijuana cultivation
sites in urban areas, nearly all commercial
marijuana production is rural, and this is likely
to be true for some years to come. Clandestine
laboratories for producing methamphetamines and
designer drugs are also commonly set up in rural
areas, where strong fumes are less likely to be
detected.

Little is known about drug trafficking in rural
areas, or about the nature and extent of networks
between urban and rural traffickers. Some networks,
however loose, must exist to allow the movement of
drugs between rural and urban areas (e.g., moving
domestic marijuana into urban areas and cocaine
into rural  areas). There are some reports of urban
gangs using major highways to move drugs into small
towns around larger cities, but this routing
probably accounts for a small proportion of the
drugs moved into and out of rural areas. 

Finally, rural areas are often key transshipment
points for drugs. Rural highway interdictions have
led to large seizures, safe houses for storing
smuggled drugs are often set up in rural areas, and
smugglers take advantage of the many isolated
airstrips set up for corporate farms. 

Drug enforcement. The use of drugs may be at
comparable levels in urban and rural communities,
but rural areas generally have much lower arrest
rates, perhaps by as much as a factor of four.
There are several possible reasons for this. First,
the greater informal control and closer social
networks may serve to limit or suppress the
misbehavior and criminality that often accompany
drug use. These same social forces may encourage
police to more frequently deal with minor drug
violators informally. A second factor that may
account for lower drug arrest rates in rural areas
is that rural police generally have fewer
resources, including less manpower and less
support. Some have argued that drug arrest rates
depend heavily on how proactively police pursue
drug cases. Limited manpower and support may
restrict the ability of rural 
police to respond proactively regarding drugs.

Whatever the reason for the low drug arrest rates
in rural areas, it is not because rural police are
indifferent to the drug problem. To the contrary,
it is a major concern. A recent survey of rural
sheriffs and small-town police chiefs asked them to
prioritize their concerns from a list of 22 issues.
Drug issues were ranked number one, followed
closely by domestic violence. All other issues
trailed far behind.

The Urban Community

Drug use and the inner city. While inner-city
communities continued experiencing growing rates of
poverty, increased social
disorganization, and escalating rates of violent
and property crime, a new smokable form of cocaine
emerged on the streets of American cities. Crack
gained both media and political attention. Early
reports from users suggested that once initiated,
compulsive crack use often followed. Consequently,
all manner of social problems were ascribed to
crack's meteoric rise. 

Researchers continued to focus their attention on
the alleged link between drug use and criminal
activity. While some maintained a connection,
others asserted that the drug-crime hypothesis was
only correlational in nature--that crime preceded
the use of illicit drugs--or that the association
was the result of shared
antecedents, such as family background, peer
association and influences, and social class.
Whatever the association, researchers argue that
involvement in the drug and criminal underclass has
a wide-ranging, negative impact on inner-city
neighborhoods.

The criminal drug subculture demonstrates a set of
values, beliefs, lifestyles, and conduct norms that
appear to embrace devaluation of legitimate means
to earn money, manipulation for the offender's
benefit, adherence to the use of illicit income to
support the "fast life," and the use of violence to
support the offender's reputation. These focal
concerns of large numbers of drug-addicted
offenders contribute to the continued decline of
inner-city communities. 

Inner-city drug trafficking. Historically, the drug
distribution research literature has focused on
heroin. The importance of Jews and Italians in the
systematic importation and sale of heroin in New
York City, and the lower levels of the heroin
distribution system have been described. Cocaine
selling was less common prior to 1970; however, it
was noted that the organizational structure of
cocaine sellers was similar to that of heroin
sellers and that, by 1976, cocaine sellers
outnumbered heroin sellers in New York City by 2 to
1. While this ratio is generally still the case,
the current resurgence of heroin, particularly in
purer forms than were prevalent in the 1970's,
suggests parallel drug threats. 

With the emergence of crack, the more stable,
organized crime groups, which had been responsible
for the distribution of heroin, gave way to
independent crack sellers who participated in low-
level, street-selling activities. Driven by high
profits, crack distribution escalated in
neighborhoods that experienced social and economic
deprivation. Within these inner-city neighborhoods,
crack distribution networks consisted of a dynamic
system of entry-level positions that operated in a
rather fluid market economy that allowed freelance
crack distributors to sell crack with minimal
investment capital. As a result of the low skill
levels and minimal initial resource outlay required
to sell crack, as well as the competition for
buyers, systemic violence flourished as a growing
army of young, inner-city crack sellers attempted
to protect their economic interests.

The structure of dealing organizations has been
described as a social system consisting of
traffickers, dealers, sellers, and low-level
distributors. The ability of street sellers to
switch to several different suppliers and to
control their work schedules underscores the
fluidity of the drug distribution system in inner-
city communities. 

Research studies have documented crack use and
distribution in New York City, Miami, Detroit, Los
Angeles, and Philadelphia. In Detroit, most crack
purchases occur primarily indoors, and crack houses
are the principal retailing outlets for crack.
While crack houses are distribution sites in
Detroit, most crack sales occur on street corners
in Philadelphia. These studies demonstrate that the
explosion of crack has reconfigured the economics
of selling drugs and has resulted in the
establishment of vertically controlled selling
organizations. As market demands increase,
competition becomes a driving force in this
organizational system.

Drug enforcement. This structure and the variety of
roles performed by members of the inner-city
illegal drug organizations serve to reduce the
effectiveness of law enforcement agents in their
attempts to arrest sellers. Law enforcement efforts
to reduce drug use have been directed at
identifying and convicting those
individuals at the top of the vertical hierarchy of
major drug distribution groups. It is believed that
such a strategy will make it more difficult for
consumers to locate their drugs of choice;
therefore, prices will increase and consumption
will be driven downward. 

An alternative strategy--sweeping the streets--
involves making arrests based on actual police
observations. This strategy requires the
substantial presence of both uniformed and
undercover officers in drug distribution sites and
changing the environmental 
conditions of drug hot spots (such as street
lighting conditions). However, these types of
sweeps yield more arrests than can be processed by
either the police or other components of the
criminal justice system. The idea of a focused
police crackdown in cities with large drug problems
avoids some of the problems inherent in the
indiscrete drug sweep. These strategies are aimed
at making it more difficult to carry out drug
transactions and to frustrate participants at all
levels of the drug distribution system.
Unfortunately, inner-city minorities bear the brunt
of such escalated criminal justice activity. 

The Policy Relevance of Existing Research
 
Rural Considerations

Understanding the policy relevance of existing
research first requires understanding rural
settings, particularly those features that
distinguish rural and urban communities. Two of
these features are social: a reliance on informal
control and a mistrust of government, particularly
a strong centralized government. Rural citizens
change addresses less frequently and are more
likely than their urban counterparts to personally
know others in the
community. This often sets the stage for solving
problems
informally, including minor crime problems. In
addition to this reliance on informal control, and
perhaps a logical extension of it, is the fact that
rural citizens are more likely to mistrust a strong
centralized government and the programs associated
with it. 

It must also be appreciated that the social meaning
of something is not always the same in urban and
rural areas. For example, gun ownership is much
more common in rural areas, but the percentage of
crimes that are committed with guns is lower in
rural areas. Guns clearly have a different meaning
for rural citizens, and drug policies that include
the issue of guns should take this into account. 

In addition to these social factors, constructing
policies related to drugs in rural areas requires
appreciating the problems that arise from
geographic size, physical isolation, and a small
and often widely dispersed population. Further,
some of the deepest pockets of poverty are in rural
areas. This poverty provides an incentive--or at
least a rationalization--for entering into the drug
business. Poverty also means a small tax base for
locally funded prevention, treatment, and
enforcement programs. 

Finally, policies must be able to deal with the
wide variations across rural areas. Describing the
"average" rural community is important, but generic
depictions may gloss over crucial variations across
rural areas. For example, while the average rural
county has a high poverty level, some are quite
wealthy. And, while geographic isolation is a
serious issue in such States as Arizona or Montana,
it is at most a minor issue in "rural" Delaware or
Maryland. 

What we know about drugs in rural areas has several
implications for policy. Drug use is not
exclusively an urban phenomenon; rural citizens are
not simply consumers of drugs but are also drug
producers and are affected by the flow of drugs
through their communities. It is clear that there
is a very real foundation for the concerns of rural
citizens about drugs in their communities and that
their concerns are shared by rural police. Thus,
ignoring rural drug problems is to ignore genuine
concerns of rural citizens and their police. At the
same time, policies that require direct Federal
involvement in enforcement should be approached
with caution. Rural citizens and rural police often
view Federal authorities with suspicion, and
Federal authorities are often not fully aware of
the nuances of the local rural culture. More
promising approaches are those that facilitate
cooperative efforts between local and Federal
authorities, or those in which Federal authorities
serve to support locally directed actions. 

The likelihood that violence is less frequently
linked to drugs in rural areas suggests caution so
that policies are not adopted that increase the
likelihood of violence while also generating public
hostility against authorities. Recognizing the
rural drug problem and an enthusiasm for
eradicating drugs should not turn rural communities
into war zones.

In sum, the unique features of the rural setting
raise questions about the wisdom of simply applying
urban solutions to rural drug problems. The rural-
urban differences are too great for this to be
successful. Additionally, the wide variations among
rural communities in different parts of the United
States raise questions about the wisdom of
developing blanket national policies that are
applied in the same way to all rural areas. The
variations among rural areas are too great for a
single broad solution.
 
Urban Considerations

It is clear that the "War on Drugs" first launched 
under the Nixon administration a quarter of a
century ago and disproportionately targeted at U.S.
inner-city racial and ethnic minorities has been a
dismal failure. Available research reveals that the
extent of drug trafficking and the crime, violence,
and lawlessness associated with drugs in the inner
cities of this Nation have not diminished despite
increasingly punitive Federal, State, and local
interventions and social control. On the contrary,
such social ills have increased despite an ever-
escalating and costly war.

To some, social problems in the United States are
centered
exclusively in the Nation's urban centers.
Researchers and the general public view inner-city
communities as areas most affected by a tangle of
pathology that produces all sorts of social ills.
In this context, drug use becomes a symptom of the
relative decline of inner-city communities.

For the most part, inner-city communities are the
places of residence for many African Americans and
Hispanics. Further, these populations have been
replenished by the migration of poor
newcomers from rural areas that has skewed the age
profiles of these communities. These populations
tend to be younger than their white counterparts.
Researchers demonstrate that the higher the group's
median age, the higher the group's income, while
the lower the group's median age, the higher the
group's unemployment rate and crime rate. It is
important to remember that the population explosion
among minority youths occurred at a time when
structural shifts occurred in the economy. These
structural shifts resulted in the relocation of
manufacturing industries to locations outside the
central city, the bifurcation of the low-wage and
high-wage sectors of the economy, and innovation in
technology. In turn, these factors resulted in
increased joblessness for this segment of the
population. In addition to growing joblessness,
increasing numbers of middle-class professional and
working-class African Americans no longer reside in
or service ghetto communities. Middle-class
professional and working-class African Americans
had provided  stability to inner-city neighborhoods
and had helped to reinforce societal norms and
values. Therefore, the removal of these families
from the inner city has made it difficult to
sustain the basic institutions of life in these
communities. The decline in the basic institutions
has also meant a corresponding decline in social
organization in the inner city. 

Analysts have all too often studied drug addiction
in isolation from racial inequality, teenage
pregnancy, female-headed families, welfare
dependency, and other social dislocations
experienced by those who are members of the growing
urban underclass. Drug use research has not
addressed the connections between the economic and
social environments into which many drug users are
born. Drug use and drug addiction have not been
tied to the structural conditions that help to
create a self-perpetuating cycle of pathology.

Recommendations for Action

It is usually easier to describe what is, than to
speak with certainty about what policies should be.
In addition, the limited research on drugs in rural
communities provides less background information
for developing policy than is true in urban areas.
With these provisos in mind, there are several
courses of action that would seem to be justified
by the existing research. 

Drug prevention and drug treatment. Drug prevention
appears to be well received in rural areas. The
studies of urban and rural students mentioned above
showed that drugs were equally available in both
settings. These same studies also found that rural
students were more likely to report taking part in
drug treatment programs. Research suggests that
rural police are very strongly committed to
programs such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(D.A.R.E.) and see themselves as playing a valuable
role in delivering drug prevention to local youth. 

Given that urban and rural communities have
comparable levels of drug use and that alcohol use
is more frequent in rural areas, it is obvious that
the treatment needs of rural communities are
substantial. Drug treatment in a rural environment
is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the close
personal networks and higher levels of informal
control may facilitate treatment. This has been
observed in a rural community that has a large
population of addicts from a nearby city who are
staying in "sobriety houses" in the community. At
the same time, drug treatment is complicated in
rural areas by the physical distances that must
often be traveled to reach treatment and by the
diseconomies of scale that accompany providing
services to a widely scattered population.
Treatment providers in rural areas are more likely
to rely on outpatient services and on such outreach
programs as hot lines and crisis intervention.
Treatment is also sometimes complicated, and
sometimes helped, by the difficulty of maintaining
patient
confidentiality in small, socially closed
communities. 

There is substantial evidence that drug treatment
programs are effective if the patients remain in
them. Therefore, retention appears to be the most
important factor in determining success. Evidence
suggests that individuals who enter community-based
treatment programs as a condition of parole or
probation--when those conditions are effectively
monitored and enforced--tend to stay in programs
longer than individuals who enter programs without
such compulsion. Civil commitment involves sending
drug users to residential treatment centers and
then, as a condition of their release back into the
community, requiring the users to enroll in an
outpatient program in which their drug use is
monitored and they are supplied with a variety of
supportive services. The key to civil commitment
appears to be supervision and enforcement.

Chronic drug-using offenders. Within urban areas,
drug and crime intervention should concentrate on
chronic heroin, cocaine, and injection drug users.
Since many users have contact with the criminal
justice system through arrest, this contact should
be used to detect and assess any drug use and to
present treatment options. Those arrestees who test
positive for substance use should be placed in
treatment while they are detained. Therefore, when
possible, community-based sentencing and
intervention programs should be considered rather
than jail or prison for drug abuse and drug
possession charges. 

Chronic abusers who are sentenced to jail or prison
should be compelled to enroll in treatment
programs. Significant research indicates that
correction-based treatment can have a substantial
impact. Once these offenders have been released on
probation or parole, legal supervision should be
lengthy to reduce the likelihood of relapsing.
During this period of legal supervision,
probationers and parolees should be enrolled in
community-based treatment programs. The research
indicates that the longer an individual remains in
a treatment program, the greater the continuity of
care and the greater the likelihood of successful
employment and a reduction in drug-and crime-
related activities. Consequently, it is important
to estimate the extent to which the criminal
population is criminally involved in order to
determine treatment needs.

Drug prevention. Drug prevention programs such as
D.A.R.E. seem especially popular in rural
communities, with police as well as citizens.
Research has correctly questioned the effectiveness
of D.A.R.E. in preventing youth drug use. However,
there are three reasons why such programs should be
continued, at least in the short run. First, there
are no alternative programs that are demonstrably
superior in preventing youth drug use. And, given
the history of substance abuse prevention programs
in general, no such alternative should be expected
soon. A second reason for
maintaining such programs is that they seem to be
very popular in rural areas. Without viable
alternative programs to respond to the public's
demand that something be done about youthful drug
use, leaving a vacuum seems unnecessary and unwise.
The third reason for keeping programs such as
D.A.R.E. is that they appear to serve the useful
function of improving communication among schools,
police, and students in rural areas. There are no
systematic data to prove this, but it is consistent
with other observations about rural communities and
rural police, and it is consistent with the beliefs
of many rural police. 

In the long run, such programs as D.A.R.E., which
build bridges between the police and the schools,
might be modified to include other groups, such as
treatment centers, civic organizations, and
churches. That is, prevention programs should
capitalize on and reinforce the closer ties among
individuals and groups that characterize many rural
communities. 

Some prevention efforts have been based on the
assumption that drug users are ignorant of the
deleterious effects of drug use and that when made
aware of these effects, they will cease using
drugs. While it is true that much has been gained
by the use of mass media campaigns, informational
lectures, and the use of celebrities as role models
to condemn the use of drugs, prevention programs
must recognize that young people are impulsive,
have undeveloped self-esteem, have peer-centered
lives, and are easily seduced by the streets and
the "fast" life. In some inner-city school settings
"resistance skills training" teaches students how
to recognize and cope with peer pressure, thereby
improving the social competency of students.
Additional evaluated experimental projects should
be conducted in order to determine the
effectiveness of this psychosocial strategy
designed to discourage drug use.

Drug enforcement. Regarding drug enforcement,
short-term actions should include continued support
for rural task forces. These have proven valuable
as a way to combine the expertise and knowledge of
the local police with the technical skills and
resources of other local police, State police, and
Federal authorities. Statistically, rural agencies
have been less likely than urban agencies to take
part in task forces. This is ironic since their
small size and limited resources may make task
force participation particularly beneficial. Task
forces may also provide an avenue for facilitating
improved relations between rural (i.e., local)
police and both State and Federal authorities.
Federal support for task forces should continue,
and there should be an examination of why small
departments are not more actively involved in them.

Resource sharing. Another short-term action is to
facilitate resource sharing among police agencies
in rural areas and between rural agencies and
others at the State and Federal levels. Small
departments occasionally need special equipment for
drug
investigations, but this need may be infrequent,
perhaps even a one-time event. In these
circumstances buying the equipment may not make
good economic sense. Even when the expenditure can
be
justified, a small department may not be able to
afford the cost. Assistance in locating special
equipment would enhance rural drug enforcement
efforts. Long-term actions might include
establishing an office to assist local agencies in
their searches. This office would not directly
distribute equipment but would help agencies to
locate the specific equipment that they need.

Training. Finally, there is the issue of training
for rural drug enforcement. In 1994 the State and
Local Training Division of the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) used input from
rural police to develop a training program for
rural drug enforcement. The content of the program
is excellent, but getting the training to rural
police is extremely difficult. Where departments
are very small--fewer than 10 officers--there is a
high interest in training. However, the expense is
often problematic for very small departments.
Perhaps a greater problem is that leaving the area
for even a week can put excessive demands on the
remaining officers and may leave shifts without
coverage. FLETC has adopted a "train the trainer"
approach to rural drug enforcement training, and
this is probably the best that can be done in the
short term. 

Over the long term there needs to be a system for
more directly taking training to rural areas. The
precise manner in which this can be done is
unclear, but one promising option is to utilize the
extensive network of community colleges found in
many States. In many States community colleges are
linked through electronic networks, making it
possible to send training out to relatively remote
areas from a central location. The Federal
Government could provide assistance in resolving
the technical issues of delivery, and FLETC could
play an important role in helping States develop,
implement, and update training tailored to the
unique rural circumstances of each State.

Identification of drug markets. Each year police
departments in urban areas establish strike forces
and develop strategies for combating crime on the
streets. However, most of these strategies have
been developed without any understanding of the
nature of drug markets and the manner by which
abusers utilize these markets. The identification
of these markets should involve community-based
surveys of drug locations. Once identified, the
activity of drug markets can be investigated in
terms of the convergence of consumers and sellers
in space and time. In this way, it would be
possible to realistically depict the drug
distribution patterns in urban areas and to
identify specific places of ongoing drug activity
for intervention. Therefore, such a strategy might
reveal that drug activity is confined to specific
areas of the city and that markets differ in terms
of their intensity, size, and social character.
Consequently, enforcement strategies should be
geographically focused. 

Police drug crackdowns. Once the dimensions and
characteristics of drug hot spots have been
identified, police drug crackdowns have been one
strategy directed at these urban areas. Police drug
crackdowns have sought to reduce the visibility of
drug transactions, the amount of drugs consumed,
the size of the drug-using population, and the
street crime associated with drug use and drug
trafficking. It has also been reasoned that police
drug crackdowns directly affect the quality of life
in a community because citizens are reassured and
are less fearful. Police crackdowns enhance
residents' confidence in law enforcement.  However,
the question remains as to whether normal
enforcement efforts can enhance the offender's
perceived risk or likelihood of apprehension.

Research. As to long-term prospects in the urban
arena, we find that the majority of social science
studies of drug users
illustrate social deviance, and addiction is
portrayed as a total way of life. Therefore,
attention has been directed to remedy the deviant
actor, and the conceptual models found in the core
of the early drug literature were either criminal
models or medical models. Newer studies, however,
adopt a view that suggests that addicts are
"victims." Nonetheless, the portrayal of addicts as
deviants persists since causality resides within
some constellation of the family, community, or
culture of the addict. Consequently, studies make
few connections to any larger social, political,
and economic contexts. 

The debate over drug legalization continues to
occupy the research agendas of countless scholars.
Central in this debate is the question of whether
the costs associated with drug use are higher if
drugs are legalized. Illegal drug use results in
increased law enforcement costs, welfare costs, and
moral costs. Legalizing drugs results in the
possible unknown costs associated with an increase
in drug consumption. The predominant drug strategy
has focused on increasing the price, difficulty,
and inconvenience associated with obtaining drugs,
as well as relying on the risks associated with
consumption of a product of unknown quality.
Virtually little concern has been given to a drug
strategy aimed at ameliorating those conditions
that continue to give rise to drug use in the inner
city: namely, an effective strategy for the inner
city that emphasizes education, job training,
psychosocial support systems, and drug prevention.

Conclusion

Although they have been relatively ignored in
research and policy, illegal drugs are an issue in
rural America and are considered among the most
pressing problems facing rural police. These rural
drug issues include consumption, production, and
transshipment. A variety of issues, including
geography, economics, low population density, and
rural culture, shape the rural drug problem and the
strategies for responding to it. For both practical
and
philosophical reasons there are limits on the
extent to which the Federal Government should
become more directly involved in rural drug
enforcement. However, there are a variety of ways
in which the Federal Government can support and
enhance local anti-drug efforts in both drug abuse
prevention and drug law enforcement. 

The value of work and joblessness are fundamental
problems that must be addressed. The ideal solution
would be to develop a combination of macroeconomic
policy, job training programs, and labor market
strategies. However, these universalist strategies
must also include exceptional programs that will
provide 
income support to lift all families out of poverty.

Concurrently, a recognition of policies to promote 
balanced economic growth must coexist with those
strategies designed to improve the overall life
chances of children by providing child support
programs, child care strategies, family allowance
programs, and programs designed to improve
parenting skills.

------------------------------
 
Violence Against Women: Overview

Edna Erez, Kent State University, Chair
Joanne Belknap, University of Cincinnati
Susan Caringella-MacDonald, Western Michigan
University Meda Chesney-Lind, University of Hawaii-
Manoa Kathleen J. Ferraro, Arizona State University
David A. Ford, Indiana University at Indianapolis
Julie Horney, University of Nebraska-Omaha
Susan L. Miller, Northern Illinois University
Elizabeth A. Stanko, Brunel University, England

Rape and the Criminal Justice System

Issues

As a result of a nationwide, grassroots effort made
during the past 20 years to reform rape laws in
this country, each of the 50 States has in some way
modified its traditional rape statutes. These
reforms encompassed three goals: to treat rape like
any other crime by concentrating on the unlawful
acts of the offender, to encourage victims to come
forward about rape, and to facilitate the
successful prosecution and conviction of rapists.
However, research has shown that reforms have
fallen far short of achieving their goals: The
incidence and prevalence of rape have not
significantly declined; reporting has not
dramatically risen; and the rates of arrest,
prosecution, and conviction of rapists have not
appreciably
improved. 

Similarly, findings show that corroboration
requirements persist in a de facto manner,
resistance standards continue to provide the basis
for decisionmaking, and past sexual activity
evidence still influences the treatment of rape
cases--in spite of enactment of shield legislation.
Moreover, victim credibility remains an issue for
courtroom participants (as well as for the public)
and all too often accompanies beliefs about victim
culpability. Attributions that blame victims
perpetuate the persecution of rape victims, rather
than the successful prosecution of rape offenders. 

Policy considerations and recommendations

o Marital rape. Some States still do not legally
recognize marital rape, while others have  extended
this exemption to cohabitors. Legal initiatives are
needed on this issue. 

o Victim anonymity. One particularly difficult
issue that demands redress is protection of the 
anonymity of victims who pursue prosecution. Laws
and policies that forbid disclosure of  victims'
names and addresses are important for victim
privacy; however, First Amendment considerations,
as well as concerns that perpetuation of the rape
stigma results from  anonymity protection, have
both arisen. 

o Accountability. Discretionary decisionmaking must
be made more visible and criminal  justice
officials held more accountable for the decisions
that shape the implementation of  reforms.
Implementation should be monitored, incentives
should be created, and public  pressure should be
used to achieve compliance.

o Victim compensation. Recourse for victims (for
the costs and pains of victimization, such  as lost
work days, medical bills, etc.) should be expanded
through the development of new  programs (that do
not exclude large categories of victims, such as
violent crime victims).  Compensation programs need
to be funded and   extended at all levels of
government.

o Victim advocacy. For victim advocacy to begin to
meet the overwhelming need for  services, financial
support for rape crisis centers and victim-witness
units must grow. Local programs  could productively
network with national political action committees
(PAC's) and  organizations, such as the National
Organization for Women or the League of Women 
Voters, to   mobilize resources.

o Outreach to minorities. Racial and ethnic
minorities are
underserved. Outreach efforts,  such as providing
multilingual services, hiring minority staff,
forging links with existing  community services,
and providing community education, should be
expanded. 

o Training for information providers. In order to
make the criminal justice system as nonthreatening
to victims as possible, it is  important to
continue providing special training for criminal
justice personnel, including  police, prosecutors,
and judges. Multidisciplinary teams consisting of
criminal justice  professionals and sexual assault
counselors should provide such training. Similarly,

dedicated units/personnel to deal with "sex crimes"
should be continued.

o Public awareness. Media campaigns are needed to
help make rape a national priority and  place it on
an agenda for change. Media slogans have been
effective in combating other  social problems and
could be developed for rape issues. Similarly,
films could be rated for  degrees of sexism and the
derogation of women, with particular emphasis on
how violence  against women is portrayed. Another
possible model for intervention is the town
meeting;  town meetings with criminal justice
personnel, educators, academicians, and social
services  providers could be coordinated as part of
a national plan to prioritize the problems of rape 
and violence against women.

o Cultural change. Systematic education, starting
with young people, is needed to challenge  the
traditional cultural beliefs and values that lead
to sexual violence. The approbation of  sexist
notions, inequalities, and violence contributes to
our "rape culture." A vision, plan, or  program
that ignores sex and power differences addresses
only symptoms, not root causes,  of violence
against women.

o Research needs. Statistics on the incidence and
prevalence of rape and sexual assaults need  to be
improved for accurate
measurement of these problems nationwide. Some
definitions  should be changed to reflect new legal
categories, and new data (e.g., on the
discretionary  decisions rendered in rape cases)
should be collected. More extensive research on the

implementation of reforms should be funded to point
the way for new efforts. More recent  reforms, such
as Federal Rules 413-415 that make admissible the
sexual history of  offenders, also need to be
examined for their impact on the treatment of rape
cases. 

Women Battering and the Criminal Justice System

Issues

Domestic and other forms of violence against women
are embedded in wider issues, such as male
dominance, sexism, racism, and poverty. Although
the ultimate prevention of violence against women
entails cultural change--e.g., debunking the belief
in violence, including corporal punishment, as an
effective or acceptable means of social control--
victims cannot wait for cultural change. 

There have been significant changes in the criminal
justice definition of, and response to, domestic
violence in the past 20 years, but these changes
have not always resulted in greater protection for
women who are violently assaulted by their intimate
partners. Various studies to measure the deterrent
effect of police response in situations where women
have been battered by cohabiting intimates have, at
best, confused the issue. It seems that arrest, per
se, has not uniformly affected the behavior of
batterers. Those with greater social bonds or
"stakes in conformity" are more likely to be
effectively deterred by onscene arrest, while
others may be driven to commit more violence. 

Mandatory arrest policies may disproportionately
affect minority women and those from lower
socioeconomic groups, who have fewer resources to
settle relationship conflicts by private means.
They may face harsher consequences on their
household income if the batterer is jailed and may
distrust police if racist treatment has
characterized prior experiences. 

Research supports the view that current police
decisionmaking is guided more by speculation and
stereotypes than by the wishes and needs of
victims, yet it also suggests that the use of
criminal law as a resource for women may minimize
violence. Police decisions must be guided by the
victim's assessment of danger.

Prosecution policy has also been scrutinized for
its impact on reducing domestic violence. Findings
from the Indianapolis Domestic Violence Prosecution
Experiment (IDVPE) suggest that it is not the type
of prosecution that is crucial, but that
prosecution is initiated. Contrary to popular
assumptions, allowing victims who initiated the
complaint to drop charges resulted in reducing the
risk of further violence. Giving victims this
control permits them to use the possibility of
abandoning prosecution as a resource in bargaining
for their security. Others are empowered by the
alliance they form with more powerful others, such
as police, prosecutors, and judges. As long as the
alliance is steadfast, a victim can threaten to
invoke her allies' power to deter her abuser.  

Policy recommendations

o Victim assessment. Overall, research indicates
that the wishes of the victim are crucial 
determinants for women's safety in the application
of law. Given different circumstances,  different
women, and different violent men, the victim's
assessment of safety and of the  impact of applying
a criminal sanction must be included in the formula
for intervention in  domestic violence situations.
Given options, including the availability of
housing, jobs, and  child care, women find ways of
stopping violence.

o Escape from violence. The Attorney General should
issue short papers disseminating the  prevailing
wisdom to police/prosecutors/judges/other court
personnel, and require ongoing  feedback,
discussions, and training with local shelters that
will provide the locally based  examples of good
and bad practices with regard to women's attempts
to escape violence.  Women should not, for example,
have to choose between being battered and being 
homeless, a choice made by more than 50 percent of
currently homeless women. 

o Women's shelters. Shelters should be treated as
key components in crime reduction  policies. They
should be adequately funded and play a central role
in any multiagency,  community-based strategy.
Shelters, and their advice lines, offer crucial
services to those  most in need--victims of
repeated violence--that may assist in reducing
further attacks. 

o Education against violence. The Attorney General
should work cooperatively with other concerned
Federal agencies to develop an educational program
addressing issues such as gender, power,
aggression, and competitiveness that are the basis
of violence, especially that within the home. This
program should become a mandatory element of the
school curriculum.  

o Family violence. The Attorney General should
reassemble a Task Force on Family  Violence to
review where we stand relative to 1984, address new
issues that were  anticipated by the previous task
force, and reassess our needs for research today. 

o Women in prison. A Federal Task Force on Women in
Prison should be established to  provide national
leadership on the specific plight of incarcerated
women, many of whom serve prison terms for violence
because they have  tried to avert an attack or
defend themselves against repeated violence by
family members  or
intimates. Sexual and physical abuse at home also
pushes young women to the street,  where they learn
to numb their pain by using drugs and to survive by
petty theft. These women and their children could
be better served by nonincarcerative options. 

Violence Against Women: Overview
 
Rape and the Criminal Justice System

Twenty some years after legislative reforms on rape
swept across this Nation, the road for progress
remains long and arduous. While some progress has
been noted in the research literature, the
accumulated knowledge is amazingly consistent in
demonstrating that rape reforms have fallen far
short of achieving their goals. A frequent
summarization in the research literature is that
the impact of rape reforms has been largely
symbolic. Antiquated myths surrounding the sexual
violence of rape, along with traditional
discriminatory legal requirements and standards,
tenaciously cling across our society and criminal
justice system, operating to prejudice the handling
of rape cases and rape victims. 

The specific research findings that identify
failure of reforms span a large continuum. Overall,
research has shown that rape has not significantly
declined; that reporting has not dramatically
risen; and that arresting, prosecuting, and
convicting rapists has not significantly improved,
despite reform efforts to facilitate those
objectives. Similarly, corroboration requirements
have been found to persist in a de facto manner,
despite the lack of their de jure existence;
resistance standards continue to be relied upon for
decision- making; and past sexual activity evidence
influences the treatment of rape cases, regardless
of even the best "shield" legislation. Moreover,
victim credibility remains an issue for legal
actors, as well as for the public, and is all too
often concomitant with beliefs about victim
culpability. Attributes that blame victims
perpetuate persecution of rape victims, rather than
successful prosecution of rape offenders. 

The following measures should be taken to progress
against the problems of rape: 

o Legislative change. The nature and magnitude of
change vary widely across States,  necessitating
further legal initiatives in many jurisdictions.
For example, some States still do  not legally
recognize marital rape, while others have extended
this  exception to cohabitors. One particularly
difficult issue that demands redress is the 
anonymity of victims who pursue prosecution. Laws
and policies that forbid disclosure of  victims'
names and addresses are important for victim
privacy; however, First Amendment  concerns, as
well as concerns that anonymity perpetuates rape
stigma, have both arisen. 

o Monitoring criminal justice. Discretionary
decisionmaking must be made more visible, and 
criminal justice officials must be held more
accountable for the decisions that shape the 
implementation of reforms. We need to monitor
implementation and create incentives and  public
pressure for compliance.

o Recourse for victims. Recourse for victims for
the costs and pains of victimization (for  example,
lost time at work and medical bills) needs to be
expanded through the  development of new programs
that do not exclude large categories of victims
(such as  violent crime victims). Compensation
programs need to be funded and extended at all
levels  of government. 

o Fund services. Rape crisis centers and victim-
witness units have been found to be a powerful
source of advocacy for victims, yet these programs
struggle simply to exist, given the widely based
competition for scarce resources. For victim
advocacy to begin to meet the overwhelming need for
services, financial support must grow. Local
programs could quite productively network with 
national PAC's and organizations, such as the
National Organization for Women and the League of
Women Voters, to assist in endeavors  and mobilize
resources. 

o Outreach to minorities. Racial and ethnic
minorities are
underserved by services. Outreach  efforts--
including multilingual services, minority hiring,
linkages with existing community  agencies, and
community education--are important for providing
victims services. 

o Inservice training. It is important to continue
to provide special training for police, 
prosecutors, and judges alike. Multidisciplinary
teams consisting of criminal justice  professionals
and sexual assault counselors are preferable for
providing such training.  Similarly, dedicated
units or personnel to deal with "sex crimes" need
to be continued. 

o Victim information. All personnel, be they social
service, medical, or criminal justice, who  come
into contact with rape victims need to be
knowledgeable about victims' rights,  processes,
and available services. These same people should be
required to inform victims  of their rights and
tell them what to expect from the legal community
and where they can  turn for support. 

o Programs for rape offenders. Counseling and
treatment programs are imperative if the  problems
of rape are to be truly impacted. Rapists have
incredibly high rates of recidivism,  indicating
that prison alone is ineffective. Rapists must
learn that their behavior is not  normal and that
their actions cannot be rationalized away by victim
blaming; it is criminal  and heinous behavior. 

o Data. Statistics on the incidence and prevalence
of rape and sexual assault are problematic.  We
need to examine and change definitions to reflect
new legal categories and, thereby,  improve our
measurement of rape nationwide (e.g., improve the
Uniform Crime Reports and  the National Crime
Survey). Although some changes have been made, data
on rape remain  problematic. Moreover, new data,
such as those on discretionary decisions rendered
in rape  case processing, need to be collected. 

o Research. Much more extensive research on the
implementation of reforms needs to be  funded to
point the way for renewed efforts. This research
will serve to identify where and  how reforms have
failed or succeeded in realizing objectives. More
recent reforms such as  the Federal Rules 413-415,
which make admissible the sexual history of
offenders, also  need to be examined for their
impact on the treatment of rape cases. 

o Media. Instead of playing a role in education and
prevention, the media perpetuate and  aggravate
rape and "rape culture." The media could help to
make violence against women a  national priority on
the agenda for change. Media slogans have been
shown to be effective  tools in combating other
social problems and could be developed for rape
issues. "Just Say  No," for instance, could be
adapted and publicized as "No Means No" to garner
national  attention. Films could be rated for
degrees of sexism and the derogation of women, with

particular emphasis on how violence against women
is portrayed. 

o Town meetings. President Clinton's successful  
engagement of town meetings provides yet another
model of possible intervention. Town  meetings with
criminal justice personnel, educators,
academicians, and social service  providers could
be coordinated as part of a national plan to
prioritize the problems of rape  and violence
against women.

o Education and societal attitude change. We need
systematic education, starting with  young people,
that challenges the traditional cultural beliefs
and values leading to sexual 
violence. A number of innovative programs ranging
from elementary school to the  university level
have shown promise. The approbation of sexist
notions of inequality and violence
contributes to our "rape culture."  The accepting
posture toward both the insidious and blatant
violence and sexism that  permeate this culture
serves to lure men to the crimes of sexual as well
as nonsexual  violence. A vision, plan, or program
that ignores sex and power differences will serve
only  as a Band-Aid, because such measures would
address symptoms rather than the root causes  of
violence against women.

Women Battering and the Criminal Justice System

Violence against women threatens to undermine
women's rights to pursue life, liberty, and
happiness. Patterns of violence against women
reflect a problem of worldwide proportions.
Rightly, over the past 20 years, special attention
has spotlighted shortcomings in the law, social
services, and advice provisions for women facing
violence in their homes and elsewhere. As research
continues to document, many women imprisoned and
hospitalized in the United States have histories
that include violence. Finally, domestic and other
forms of violence against women must be understood
as being embedded in wider issues, such as male
dominance, sexism, racism, and poverty. 

Sole reliance on the criminal justice system to
stop violence against women is a mistaken policy.
That said, the failure to set the practice of
criminal justice actors into the prevailing wisdom
contributes to the danger women face from
intimates, former husbands, and others. The police
have been the target of much of the research to
date. The various studies of police response in
situations of cohabiting intimates as a deterrent
to men's violence have, at best, confused the
issue. It seems that arrest per se did not have a
uniform effect on men's behavior; perpetuating the
myth that arrest can, in and of itself, deter men's
violence is mistaken. Yet, research evidence
suggests that the use of criminal law as a resource
for women may minimize the violence.
Discretionary decisionmaking by the police must be
guided by the victim's assessment of danger. All
the research supports the view that, at present,
police decisionmaking is faulty, guided more by
speculation and use of stereotypes than by the
wishes and needs of victims, undermining even the
best policy within the criminal justice arena. 

Prosecution policy has also been scrutinized for
its impact on reducing domestic violence. Findings
from Ford's study of Indianapolis suggest that it
is not the type of prosecution that is crucial, but
that prosecution is initiated. Contrary to popular
assumptions, allowing victims who initiated the
complaint to drop charges resulted in reducing the
risk of further violence. 

The lessons from police studies and studies
focusing on prosecution converge: The wishes of the
victim are crucial determinants of women's safety
in the application of law. The evidence concurs
that, given different circumstances, different
women, and different violent men, the victim's
assessment of safety and of the impact of a
criminal sanction must be included in the formula
for
intervention in family violence situations. If they
have options, which include the availability of
housing, jobs, and child care, women find ways of
stopping violence. Should they need the
assistance of the criminal justice system, the
research suggests that it does not often serve
their needs.  

Recommendations

It is the consensus of the members of this task
force that
protecting the provisions of the Violence Against
Women Act, which provide funds to direct service to
women facing violence, is essential for the safety
of women. In an era of brutal fiscal cuts to public
provision of care, it is also critical to protect
the moneys allocated in the recent crime bills for
research and encourage creative and innovative
practice that is globally informed, yet locally
based. The Attorney General can assist this process
by disseminating information on flexible, good
practice based on experiences of victims, not those
of criminal justice personnel.

o Information dissemination. The Attorney General
should issue short papers that  disseminate
prevailing wisdom to police, prosecutors, judges,
and other court personnel.  These papers should
require ongoing feedback, discussions, and training
with local shelters,  which will provide locally
based examples of good and bad practice and the
methods used  by local women to escape violence.

Rationale: Each player in the criminal justice
system holds unique personal and institutionally
based perspectives on what constitutes justice.
Research continually finds patchy adherence to even
the best policy; ignorance or disregard about men's
violence affects different women differently.
Decisionmaking in situations of family violence
rarely embraces what women themselves already do to
ensure their safety. Women should not, for example,
have to choose between being battered and being
homeless. We must acknowledge the impact of
violence on the criminal justice system: Everyone
deals with it but no one takes responsibility.
Police should be treated as  resources for women
and children facing violence. Research indicates
that mandating particular ways of responding to
calls for assistance does not result in protection.
Women should be considered partners in decisions
made on their behalf, including decisions to drop
charges. Evidence should be gathered that
demonstrates how to empower particular victims to
manage the violence, with support and backup from
statutory and voluntary agencies. 

o Shelters. Shelters should be treated as key
components in crime reduction policies. They 
should be funded adequately as key players in any
multi-
 agency, community-based  strategy. 

Rationale: There is growing acknowledgment among
criminologists that crime prevention should be
aimed toward those at greatest risk. Victims of
repeated violence require continuous support from
such resources as police, courts, and hospitals.
Shelters and their advice lines offer crucial
services to those most in need, which may assist in
reducing repeated attacks. 

o Public education. The Attorney General should
commit U.S. Department of Justice  resources in
cooperative efforts with other Federal agencies
concerned with violence (for  example, the National
Institute of Justice, together with the Centers for
Disease Control and  Prevention, an agency within
the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services) and
prepare an educational program addressing violence
(especially within the home)  that becomes a
mandatory component of the school curriculum.
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have taken such
action, which begins to address the foundation of
violence by taking seriously the issues of gender,
power, aggression, and competitiveness. Public
education is also appropriate. One campaign, Zero
Tolerance, which took place in Edinburgh, Scotland
(and Canada and Australia), featured public
posters, television advertisements, advertising
during highly popular sporting events (such as
soccer and rugby), and local radio coverage, aimed
to dispel myths about violence against women. 

o The Attorney General's Task Force on Family
Violence. The Attorney General should  reassemble
an Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence
to review where we stand  relative to 1984, to
address new issues that were anticipated by the
previous task force, and  to reassess our needs for
research today. We nominate Professor Kathleen
Ferraro as our  representative on this task force.

Rationale: Women and children who face violence are
best served by community commitment, demonstrated
by links among many agencies, volunteer groups,
legal services, hospitals, schools, housing, and
emergency help lines. Federal grants should be
available to distribute good practice awards to
communities demonstrating community responsibility
for violence against women and children.  
Women and Imprisonment

In the past decade, the number of women in U.S. 
prisons more than tripled. Sexual abuse and
physical violence against women is often correlated
with imprisonment. Many women who serve prison
terms for violence are incarcerated because they
have tried to avert an attack or defend themselves
against repeated violence by family members or
intimates. Sexual and physical abuse at home also
push young women to the street, where they learn to
numb their pain by using drugs and survive by
resorting to petty theft. These women, whose
survival measures are criminalized, increasingly
inhabit our prisons. They and their children could
be better served by nonincarcerative options.
Reduction in women's imprisonment would free an
enormous amount of funds to care for them and their
children in the community, as well as provide them
with necessary resources. 

A Federal Task Force on Women in Prison should be
established to provide national leadership on the
specific needs of women. We propose Professor Meda
Chesney-Lind as our representative on this task
force.

Editor's note: Members of the Task Force on
Violence Against Women also prepared separate
reports, listed below, from which this overview
distilled findings:

o "Recommendations for the Task Force on Violence
Against Women" by Joanne Belknap  (NCJ 158902).

o "Summarization of Issues and Recommendations on
Rape" by Susan Caringella-MacDonald  (NCJ 158903).

o "Women in Prison: Punishing Victims as Penal
Policy" by Meda Chesney-Lind (NCJ  158904).

o "Domestic Violence and the Criminal Justice
Response" by Kathleen J. Ferraro (NCJ 158905).

o "Domestic Violence Against Women" by David A.
Ford (NCJ 158906). 

o "Rape: The Impact and Limits of Law Reform" by
Julie Horney (NCJ 158907).

o "Federal Task Force on Violence Against Women" by
Susan L. Miller (NCJ 158908).

Copies of these individual reports are available on
interlibrary loan or for a photocopy fee.

Contact the National Criminal Justice Reference
Service,  1-800-851-3420, and ask for the document
by title and NCJ number.

------------------------------

Domestic and International Organized Crime

Jay Albanese, Niagara University, Co-chair
James O. Finckenauer, Rutgers University, Co-chair

Domestic Organized Crime

Issues

Although seriously weakened in the past 25 years,
the traditional Cosa Nostra form of organized crime
has not been eliminated; instead, it has been
joined by a variety of increasingly powerful
domestic and international organized criminal
networks operating in this country. Criminal
organizations (particularly those from China and
Latin America) are exploiting the increases in U.S.
immigration for both cover and concealment of
criminal activities, as well as for recruitment.
Aliens, smuggled by boat, pay exorbitant passage
fees and cannot work at regular jobs; thus, they
are exploited by unscrupulous employers or become
active in prostitution, the drug trade, or other
aspects of the illegal economy. In this way,
victims become criminals themselves. 

One problem in combating these groups is that
citizens have not been mobilized as allies in the
effort. Despite a series of significant
prosecutions for racketeering conspiracies during
the last decade, vast numbers of Americans continue
to gamble illegally, use banned drugs, buy stolen
property, and otherwise contribute to the very same
conspiracies that the government is fighting to
defeat.

Policy recommendations

o Citizen mobilization. Special grand jury
provisions of the Organized Crime Control Act, 
calling for an investigative grand jury to be
convened at least every 18 months to examine 
organized crime and corruption in districts of more
than one million
citizens, should finally  be implemented.
Significantly, the law provides for the special
grand jury to issue a report  on those conditions
at the end of its term. Implementation would
provide a tremendous  opportunity for citizens on
the grand jury to help educate other citizens,
through followup  town meetings and other
mechanisms, about the less obvious evils of
organized crime.  

o Surveillance. Specific policy and judicial
authorization guidelines should be developed as a
way to make installations of  eavesdropping and
monitoring devices uniform--and the expectations of
investigators, their  supervisors, and the
judiciary identical. There is no way to eliminate
the danger of these  installations, but law and
policy must more specifically circumscribe this
issue to protect  those in law enforcement and
negate the possibility of agency embarrassment,
should an  incident occur.

o  Criminal informants. DOJ should establish a
technical assistance program designed to  train
State and local authorities in the proper
development, use, and management of criminal 
informants, because the misuse of informants has
not only misled police but undermined  public
support for the use of informants. Technical
assistance might consist of the  development of
police courses (required for those handling
informants) or inservice training  on this issue.

o Uniform training standards. DOJ should develop
minimum standards and curriculum  for police
training nationwide, with special emphasis on the
training of local police.  Inconsistency in
training hurts professionalism, lateral career
mobility of officers, and  interagency cooperation
in combating organized crime.

o Seizure of assets. DOJ should develop specific
guidelines for the seizure of assets to  set a
national standard. Public confidence erodes when
seizures are made that appear  questionable.
Several lawsuits against police are pending on this
issue. The incidence or  appearance of
unprofessional behavior on the part of police in
organized crime control  efforts must be removed. 

o Tracking illicit drugs. DOJ should provide
incentives and guidelines for States, as well as
other nations, to track identified illicit drugs
and to prohibit their use under penalty of law.
Only 18 States have enacted legislation similar to
the Chemical Diversion and Trafficking Act
(establishing Federal recordkeeping, reporting, and
transaction requirements for
essential chemicals), and these laws differ widely
in their scope and requirements. Other
jurisdictions must also be kept abreast of new
synthetic chemicals that should be added each year
to the list of essential chemicals. 

o Court-imposed trusteeships. Court-imposed
trusteeships should be utilized against  nonunion
businesses found to be controlled by organized
crime. Such intervention enables  the government to
"restart" the business with completely new
personnel and supervisory and  auditing procedures
to prevent the return of organized crime. This kind
of intercession in  nonunion businesses has
occurred in few instances thus far, but its
potential as a tool for  long-term prevention is
enormous.

o Investigative screening. DOJ should sponsor one
or more "teams" of interested researchers  and
organized crime investigators to work for a period
of months, since there has been too  little
interaction among these professionals. Together,
they should test investigative  screening models of
businesses at high risk of infiltration by
organized crime and translate  their findings into
usable form for investigators at the Federal,
State, and local levels. A  proven case-screening
(or business-screening) model could do much to 
reduce time spent on proactive investigations that
lead to dead ends. 

o Shared perspectives. DOJ should sponsor "long-
term prevention" forums periodically for  the
specific purpose of integrating law enforcement and
criminological perpectives on the  problem of
organized crime. Expertise and   insight on both
sides could be profitably shared to develop
effective organized crime control  
innovations.

International Organized Crime 

Issues

The Federal Government has particular and singular
responsibilities with regard to the transnational
and international dimensions of organized crime
(e.g., international drug trafficking, arms
dealing, and murder for hire), which are unique in
nature and scope. There is increasing evidence that
the wealth and power of criminal organizations in
various countries are growing and that
international links among these organizations
exist. A number of factors associated with this
globalization of organized crime have 
implications for the United States.

A state of ungovernability, instability, and
fragmentation in certain countries provides
favorable conditions for the development and
nurturance of organized criminal groups. This is
especially true in the countries that were part of
the former Soviet Union, but it also applies to
Eastern Europe and countries such as Peru, Burma,
Mexico, and Pakistan. These countries provide both
operational bases and safe havens for international
criminals. 

Of continuing special concern is the problem of
organized crime operating in and from the former
USSR. The so-called "Russian mafia" are operating
in Germany, Poland, and virtually every other state
in Eastern and Central Europe. There is also a
growing problem of organized criminal networks
among Soviet emigres in the U.S. In the successor
states of the USSR (especially Russia), organized
crime is undermining efforts to create the rule of
law, as well as attacking various fledgling
democratic institutions. Internationally, Russian
organized crime's illegal trade in high-tech
weaponry, potentially including nuclear weapons,
constitutes a considerable threat. 

An increasingly sophisticated use of advanced
communications technology facilitates the wire
transfers of money for laundering on a much greater
scale than ever before. The threat to the integrity
of international banking is considerable.

Coupled with the amplified scope and magnitude of
international organized crime is an inadequate law
enforcement response, due to the absence of
international cooperation and policy; limited
exchange of intelligence and mutual legal
assistance; functional and bureaucratic
fragmentation among the various criminal justice
agencies; a dearth of specialized personnel;
competition and turf battles among responsible
agencies; and failure to coordinate or harmonize
national and international laws. 

Policy recommendations 

o Russian racketeering. The United States should
take the lead in helping Russian officials  to
draft effective anti-racketeering legislation (not
necessarily duplicating the Racketeer  Influenced
and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute) that is
appropriate to and mindful of  Russia's special
circumstances and legal traditions. 

o Aid tied to reforms. American and other Western
aid to Russia should be specifically  targeted to
combating organized crime. Steps to be taken in
this effort must include  reforming the Russian
judicial system; equipping law enforcement agencies
with vehicles,  computers, and other communications
equipment; and training and providing technical 
assistance to law enforcement personnel in
organized crime investigative techniques. 
Consideration should also be given to some kind of
salary
supplement plan. This aid must  be linked to the
development of aggressive methods for rooting out
(and keeping out)  corruption in the criminal
justice system.

o Joint data bank. A joint Western-Russian data
bank on Russian organized crime should be
established. This data bank should include the
names of individuals and groups known to be
involved in organized crime, as well as data on
their criminal histories, records of international
travel, contacts in the West, criminal enterprises,
and legitimate businesses, etc. Interpol might do
this or at least play some role in it.

o Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN).
The intelligence-gathering and  investigative
utility of FINCEN, already demonstrated in areas of
international money  laundering and banking
schemes, and especially those involving Russians,
should be  expanded.

o Criminal justice training for Russians. A broad-
based effort to improve the  performance of
criminal justice officials in the former Soviet
Union--through recruitment,  training, education,
and technical assistance--should be undertaken.
This effort should not be  limited to include only
agencies of the Federal Government, such as the
Federal Bureau of  Investigation (FBI) and the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA), but also draw
heavily  on the resources and valuable expertise at
the State and local levels. It should also involve 
the private sector, e.g., the Police Executive
Research Forum, the Police Foundation, the 
National District Attorneys Association, as well as
criminology/criminal justice educators  and
researchers in colleges and universities.

Dealing With Domestic and International Organized
Crime
In many respects organized crime is unique--
different from the subject matter focus of any
of the other task forces constituting the National
Policy Committee of the American Society of
Criminology. Given its nature and scope, it has a
potential for harm that is greater than most of
these other areas. Organized crime involvement in
international drug trafficking, arms dealing, and
murder-for-hire are just a few examples supporting
this contention. Organized crime has transnational
and international dimensions as well as being a
domestic concern; it is a crime problem for which
the Federal Government has particular and singular
responsibilities. These characteristics have
important implications for both overall policy and
any specific action recommendations.

Coincident with its character, unfortunately, the
research and information base for our knowledge of
organized crime is extremely weak--weaker than just
about any other area of criminological research.
Policy recommendations, therefore, can be grounded
only partially in good research. 

We will briefly outline the limitations of existing
research on organized crime and then focus on the
policy relevance of what is known. We will conclude
by offering a number of policy recommendations for
addressing both the domestic and international
aspects of organized crime. 
 
What Do We Know About Organized Crime Policy?

Research on organized crime is much more anecdotal
and descriptive than research on other forms of
crime. There are very few empirical studies--none
focusing on global forms of organized crime.
Organized crime researchers are very dependent upon
documents and reports from law enforcement
agencies. These sources, however, are often limited
in a variety of ways: by secrecy, by sanitizing of
public documents through the production of
"disinformation" by certain government agencies, by
corruption that distorts 
reporting, and by the fact that agencies often
simply do not know what is happening. 

Information from law enforcement sources thus must
be supplemented with information from other sources
(for example, investigations by independent
journalists and scholars and by national and
international bodies commissioned to look into this
problem). We have drawn upon all of these sources
in identifying what we see as some current problems
in law, policy, procedure, and priorities. 

Domestic Policy Issues

Great strides have been taken in the last 25 years
against
traditional (Cosa Nostra) forms of organized crime
in the United States. This particular form of
organized crime has been seriously weakened.
Nevertheless, it has not been eliminated, and, more
ominously, what is left of the old so-called
"mafia" has been joined by a variety of
increasingly powerful domestic and international
organized criminal networks operating in the United
States. A number of problems remain to be addressed
in combating these groups. 

o Citizens have not been mobilized as allies in the
effort to control organized crime. Despite a 
series of significant prosecutions for racketeering
conspiracies during the past decade, vast  numbers
of Americans continue to gamble illegally, use
banned drugs, buy stolen property,  and otherwise
contribute to the very same conspiracies that the
Government is fighting to  defeat. 

o Available scientific methods have not been
employed to the greatest extent possible in 
developing investigative screening devices for
organized crime cases. Case study findings on  the
infiltration of business by organized crime have
not been translated into usable tools for 
investigators. Likewise, prediction models of
businesses at high risk of such infiltration have 
not been tested. 

o An overlooked issue in the use of eavesdropping
and monitoring devices (considered to be  essential
in investigating organized crime) is that
Government agents are placed at  considerable risk
in placing such devices. Given that installation
requires
trespassing upon  private property, beyond the risk
of
embarrassment at being caught, there is a real
danger  that a Government agent may be seen as an
intruder and subjected to deadly defensive
measures. 

o Criminal informants, who have become primary
ingredients in organized crime prosecutions  in
recent years, must be more strictly controlled to
prevent their misuse. There have been  instances,
especially at the local level, of the police being
misled by informants, resulting in  innocent people
being harmed or killed. This undermines public
support for the use of  informants. The latter is
especially important because informants are viewed
skeptically by  the public anyway. When the use of
informants is abused, it only reinforces this
skepticism  in the minds of citizens who may be
potential jurors in criminal cases involving
informants.  

o There is an astounding lack of uniformity in the
standards and quality of law enforcement  training
across the United States. This has a dramatic
effect on the ability to investigate  organized
crime because incompetence and lack of
professionalism are major factors in the  failure
to share intelligence information among the
responsible agencies. Law enforcement  agencies,
often with good reason, simply refuse to share
information with others because of  suspicions
about incompetence and corruption. 

o Legal provisions for asset forfeiture have been
abused or misused by some law enforcement 
agencies. This creates a conflict of interest and
offers temptations for self-serving actions. 

o There has been an increase in the number of
clandestine drug laboratories in the United 
States. These laboratories produce synthetic drugs,
such as methamphetamine and PCP, and  combine coca
leaves with solvents to produce cocaine. According
to one estimate, illegal  domestic laboratories are
now capable of producing enough illicit drugs to
satisfy U.S.  consumers' demand. The Chemical 
Diversion and Trafficking Act established Federal
recordkeeping, reporting, and transaction 
requirements for essential chemicals. However, only
18 States have enacted similar  legislation to
track chemicals, and this legislation varies widely
in the number and types of  chemicals covered and
in drug-tracking requirements.  
 
o Court-imposed trusteeships on the Teamsters' and
Laborers' unions have proven to be a  uniquely
effective way to remove "mob" influence from
organizations where criminal  prosecutions of
leaders had no effect on the corrupt nature of
these organizations in the  past. This is because
trustees have authority to control finances and
other aspects of union  operations, and they can
ensure democratic elections of union officers.
There are other  non-union businesses presently
controlled by organized crime that could benefit
from such  trusteeships. 

o There is too little interaction between law
enforcement officials charged with investigating 
and prosecuting organized crime and criminologists
who research the problem as a social  phenomenon.
Because of differences in organizational
affiliations, they rarely or never meet  at
professional conferences. They also do not
participate in any other forms of joint training, 
workshops, information-sharing forums, etc. In
addition to maintaining a degree of  ignorance on
both sides, this isolation serves only to increase
suspicion of the other group's  motives.
Opportunities to understand and better explain
organized crime are lost as a result.  
International Policy Issues

There is increasing evidence that the wealth and
power of criminal organizations in various
countries are growing and that there are
international links among these organizations. A
number of factors associated with this
globalization of organized crime have
implications for the United States: 

o A state of ungovernability, instability, and
fragmentation in certain countries provides 
favorable conditions for the development and
nurturance of organized criminal groups. This  is
especially true in the countries that were part of
the former Soviet Union. But it is also  arising in
Eastern Europe and, for example, in Peru, Burma,
Mexico, and Pakistan. These  countries provide both
bases of operation and safe havens for
international criminals. 

o Criminal organizations are exploiting increases
in immigration to the United States for both  cover
and concealment of criminal activities, as well as
for recruitment. Groups from Latin  America and
China are heavily involved in alien smuggling. The
Chinese are highly  organized, and it is estimated
that there are more than two dozen smuggling rings
in New  York City alone. Aliens are most often
smuggled by boat and pay fees of up to $30,000 for 
their passage. This exorbitant passage fee makes
them slaves to their transporters once they  reach
the United States. Because they are illegal aliens,
they cannot work at regular jobs. As  a result,
they are exploited by unscrupulous employers or
become active in prostitution, the  drug trade, or
other aspects of the illegal economy. In this way,
victims become criminals  themselves, thus adding
to the crime problem. Interdiction at the U.S.
borders does not  seem to be effective. 

o Increased technology for communications, and
increasingly sophisticated use of this  technology,
facilitates the use of wire transfers of money
involved in money laundering on a  much greater
scale than ever before. The threat to the integrity
of
international banking is  considerable. 

o Coupled with the vast increase in the scope and
magnitude of the international organized  crime
problem is a woefully inadequate law enforcement
response. This inadequacy arises  from (1) lack of
international cooperation and policy; (2) limited
exchange of intelligence  and mutual legal
assistance; (3) functional and bureaucratic
fragmentation among the  various agencies of
criminal justice; (4) absence of specialized
personnel; (5) competition  and turf battles among
responsible agencies; and (6) a failure to
coordinate or harmonize  national and international
laws. 

Current developments in Eurasia exemplify the
difficulties outlined above. There, law enforcement
agencies are tainted by association with old
regimes and old-style methods. There is confusion
and duplication of effort involving old criminal
codes, new legislation, and various administrative
methods, both old and new. Personnel are not only
suspect because of questionable integrity, they are
also poorly trained and in short supply. In
addition, there are widespread shortages of
equipment, and available equipment is obsolete.

That these problems have not gone unrecognized by
Federal law enforcement is evident in the efforts
to establish an international training facility in
Budapest, Hungary, to open a Federal Bureau of
Investigation/Drug Enforcement Administration
office in Beijing, and to increase resources for
the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We
applaud these initiatives as good beginnings. 

Of continuing special concern, we believe, is the
problem of organized crime operating in and from
the former Soviet Union. What are termed,
generically, "Russian mafia" are operating in
Germany, Poland, and virtually every other state in
Eastern and Central Europe. There is also a growing
problem of organized criminal networks among Soviet
emigres in the United States. In the
successor states of the Soviet Union (especially
Russia), organized crime is undermining efforts to
create the rule of law as well as  attacking
various fledgling democratic institutions. It is
likewise undermining popular attitudes toward
democracy and free enterprise. Internationally,
Russian organized crime's illegal trade in high-
tech weaponry, potentially including nuclear
weapons, constitutes a considerable threat.  

Policy Recommendations

o It is recommended that the special grand jury
provisions of the Organized Crime Control  Act
finally be implemented. As you know, these
provisions call for an investigative grand  jury to
be called at least every 18 months to examine
organized crime and corruption in  districts of
more than 1 million citizens. Significantly, the
law also provides for the special  grand jury to
issue a report on those conditions at the end of
its term. This has rarely, if  ever, occurred in
the last 25 years. This omission misses a
tremendous opportunity for  citizens on the grand
jury to help educate other citizens about the less
obvious evils of  organized crime. Rather than
Government officials repeating what has been said
since the  days of Attorney General Robert Kennedy,
fellow citizens would be mobilized to carry that 
same message through periodic grand jury reports,
followup by town meetings, and other  mechanisms to
raise community awareness.

o It is recommended that the Department of Justice
sponsor one or more "teams" of interested 
researchers and organized crime investigators to
work together for a period of months to test  such
investigative screening models and translate their
findings into a usable form for  investigators of
organized crime at the Federal, State, and local
levels. Such a case-screening, or  business-
screening, model could do much to reduce time spent
on proactive investigations  that lead to dead
ends. 

o It is recommended that specific policy and
judicial authorization guidelines be developed as 
a way to make installations of
eavesdropping and monitoring devices uniform and
the  expectations of investigators, their
supervisors, and the judiciary identical. There is
no way to eliminate the  danger of these
installations, but law and policy must more
specifically circumscribe this  issue to protect
those in law enforcement and to negate the
possibility of agency  embarrassment should an
incident occur.

o It is recommended that the Department of Justice
establish a technical assistance program  designed
to train State and local agencies on the proper 
development, use, and management of criminal
informants. This technical assistance might consist
of development of police courses  required for
those handling informants, or inservice training,
on this issue. 

o It is recommended that the Department of Justice
develop minimum standards and  curriculum for
police training nationwide, with special emphasis
on the training of local police.  Inconsistency in
training hurts professionalism, lateral career
mobility of officers, and  interagency cooperation
in combating organized crime.

o It is recommended that specific guidelines for
seizures of assets be developed to set a  national
standard. Without such a standard, public
confidence erodes when seizures are  made that
appear questionable. Several lawsuits against
police are pending on this issue. A  standard is
imperative to remove the incidence or appearance of
unprofessional behavior on  the part of police in
organized crime control efforts.

o It is recommended that the Department of Justice
provide incentives and guidelines for  States, as
well as other nations, to track identified illicit
drugs and to prohibit their use  under penalty of
law. Other jurisdictions must also be kept abreast
of new synthetic  chemicals that should be added
each year to the list of essential chemicals. 

o It is recommended that similar efforts be
undertaken for nonunion businesses found to be 
controlled by organized crime. Such intervention
enables the Government to "restart" the  business
with completely new personnel and supervisory and
auditing procedures to prevent  the return of 
organized crime. This kind of intercession in non-
union businesses has occurred in a few instances
thus far, but its potential as a tool for long-term

prevention is enormous.

o It is recommended that the Department of Justice
periodically sponsor long-term "prevention  forums"
for the specific purpose of integrating law
enforcement and criminological  perspectives on the
problem of organized crime. There are expertise and
insight on both  sides that might prove valuable in
the development of future innovations in organized
crime  control efforts.

o The United States should take the lead in helping
Russian officials to draft effective 
antiracketeering legislation. We do not believe
that this legislation should necessarily be a 
duplicate of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organization (RICO) Act, but rather  should be
legislation that is appropriate to and mindful of
Russia's special circumstances  and legal
traditions. 

o American and other Western aid to Russia should
be targeted specifically toward combating 
organized crime. Steps to be taken in this effort
must include reforming the Russian judicial 
system; equipping law enforcement with vehicles,
computers, and other communications  equipment; and
providing training and technical assistance to law
enforcement in organized crime  investigative
techniques. Consideration should also be given to
some kind of salary  supplementation plan. This aid
must be linked to the development of aggressive
methods for  rooting out (and keeping out)
corruption in the criminal justice system. 

o Establish a joint Western-Russian data bank on
Russian organized crime. This data bank  should
include the names of individuals and groups known
to be involved in organized  crime, their criminal
histories, records of international travel, their
contacts in the West,  their criminal enterprises
and legitimate businesses, and other information.
Interpol might do  this, or at least play some role
in it. 

o The intelligence gathering and investigative
utility of the Financial Crimes Enforcement 
Network (FINCEN), already
demonstrated in areas of international money
laundering and  banking schemes--especially those
involving Russians--should be expanded. 

o A broad-based effort to improve the performance
of criminal justice officials in the former  Soviet
Union--through recruitment, training, education,
and technical assistance--should be  undertaken.
This effort should not be limited to include only
agencies of the Federal  Government such as the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug 
Enforcement Administration; it should also draw
heavily upon the resources and valuable  expertise
at the State and local levels. In addition, it
should involve private sector  organizations such
as the Police Executive Research Forum, the Police
Foundation, and the National District Attorneys 
Association, as well as criminology/criminal
justice educators and researchers in colleges and
universities. 

------------------------------

Designing Out Crime

Ronald Clarke, Rutgers University, Chair
Patricia Brantingham, Simon Fraser University 
Paul Brantingham, Simon Fraser University 
John Eck, Crime Control Institute 
Marcus Felson, University of Southern California 

Designing Out Crime

Issues

Our failure to bring crime under control through a
wide range of modifications to the criminal justice
system has blinded us to the successful efforts
continuously being made by a host of private and
public agencies--municipalities, schools,
hospitals, parks, malls, bus companies, banks,
department stores, taverns, offices,
factories, parking lots--to bring a wide range of
troublesome and costly crimes under control. In
most cases, these successes are achieved by
identifying ways to reduce opportunities for highly
specific kinds of crime--the approach advocated by
environmental crime prevention.

The essential tenets of environmental crime
prevention, of which Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design (CPTED) and
Situational Crime Prevention are the best known
examples, are to: 

o Increase the difficulty of committing crime
(e.g., credit card photos). 

o Increase the perceived risks (e.g., burglar
alarms). 

o Reduce the rewards associated with criminal acts
(e.g., PIN for car radios). 

o Reduce the rationalizations that facilitate crime
(e.g., simplify tax forms). 

While the Federal Government gave some support to
CPTED in the 1970's, interest in environmental
crime prevention languished in our country. One
reason for this loss of support was the concern
that blocking opportunities for crime would result
in its displacement to some other target, time, or
place (i.e., the net amount of crime would remain
the same, although its manifestations would be
different). This belief was bolstered by
criminological theories that generally failed to
recognize important situational determinants of
crime, such as the availability of tempting goods
to steal and the absence of adequate guardianship
of vulnerable property and persons. 

In recent years, however, new criminological
theories have emphasized the role of opportunities
in crime causation. These theories, which include
routine activity theory and rational choice theory,
argue that, as the number of opportunities for
crime increase, more crimes will be committed;
conversely, as opportunities are reduced, so crime
will decline. Whether or not displacement takes
place depends on the ease with which offenders can
obtain the same criminal rewards without greatly
increased effort or risks. Somebody who has
developed the habit of shoplifting from the
supermarket will not inevitably turn to some other
form of crime, involving greater risk of detection
and more severe penalties, if the store takes
effective preventive action. In fact, particular
crimes serve special purposes for the offender. A
thwarted rapist will not turn to mugging or drug
dealing.   

Policy recommendations

o Federal Crime Prevention Department. A crime
prevention department should be  established in the
Department of Justice along the lines of similar
units now functioning in a  number of European
countries. This unit would have a research and
dissemination role and  would also initiate action
to "design out crime" that more naturally falls to
central  government than to State or local
agencies. For example, the department could ensure
the  security of the phone system, credit cards, or
ATM cards through Federal influence on 
manufacturers and service providers at an industry
level. Important preventive initiatives  that
currently need Federal Government sponsorship
include development of effective  personal alarms
for repeat victims of domestic violence and the use
of PIN numbers for  VCR's and other electronic
devices that are targets for burglary. 

o Crime Prevention Extension Service. A Crime
Prevention Extension Service, linked to  local
universities, along the lines of the successful
agricultural model, should be developed within the
Department of Justice. Its mandate  should be to
deliver expert crime prevention advice to small
businesses and local  communities. Such a service
would complement rather than compete with the work
of the  police, especially as community policing
ideas take hold. 

Designing Out Crime

Introduction

Ever since crime rates began to rise in the 1960's,
policymakers and criminologists have been searching
for ways to bring crime under control.
Unfortunately, we have focused too exclusively on
the capacity of the criminal justice system to
deter, incapacitate, or rehabilitate offenders. In
the face of disappointing results, we have failed
to look outside the criminal justice system, but
rather have redoubled our efforts to achieve
benefits the system probably cannot deliver. More
police have been placed on the streets, more people
have been arrested, more sentences have been
lengthened, and more prisons have been built, all
with little demonstrable benefit. 
At the same time, unaided by policymakers and
criminologists, a host of agencies and institutions
outside the criminal justice system have been
successfully making efforts to control a range of
troublesome and costly crimes. These include
efforts made by banks to prevent fraud and robbery,
by department stores to reduce shoplifting, by
transit systems to reduce graffiti, by
municipalities to eliminate drug markets, by
housing authorities to eliminate muggings, by
schools to prevent bullying, by libraries to reduce
book thefts, and by companies to reduce sexual
harassment. Without these efforts, the crime
problem would be truly out of hand. 

Few of these successes have been studied, but the
published literature contains case studies that
document the following: 

o The elimination of graffiti on the New York City
subway system during the 1980's through  a program
of immediate cleansing of fresh attacks.

o The substantial reduction of aircraft hijackings
in the 1970's achieved by baggage screening  and
associated measures at airports around the world.

o The virtual elimination of robberies of bus
drivers in 20 U.S. cities during the 1970's 
following the introduction of exact fare.

o Substantially reduced levels of car theft in
Germany, Great Britain, and the United States 
resulting from the introduction of steering locks
in the 1960's and 1970's. 

o Even greater reductions in car thefts in the
early part of this century following the  enactment
of vehicle registration laws.

o Reductions in thefts of car radios following the
introduction of security-coded radios that are
operable only with knowledge of the PIN.

o Reductions in thefts from parking lots, robberies
in subway stations, and graffiti and  vandalism on
buses, through the deployment of closed circuit
television surveillance. 

o Reduced assaults on bus drivers through the
fitting of plexiglass screens. 

o Greatly reduced shoplifting from stores and
reduced book thefts from libraries after the 
adoption of electronic merchandise tagging.

o Reduced theft in hospitals of patients'
belongings achieved by strict accounting systems
and  in warehouses by use of similar methods.

Reductions in crime occur relatively quickly after
situational interventions, and the crimes prevented
quickly turn into large savings, not just for those
who would otherwise have been victims, but also for
the public at large. For example, it has recently
been estimated that for each burglary prevented in
Canada that would have been solved, adjudicated,
and followed by a prison sentence, the average
saving to society per case would currently run
around $160,000. There is little reason to think
this figure would be very different in the United
States.

The fast payoff from situational prevention efforts
can be
contrasted with that from other crime prevention
strategies that often take years to produce
reductions in crime if, indeed, they do at all. A
classic example would be subsidized preschool
programs (e.g., Operation Head Start) that
intervene in the lives of 3- and 4-year-old
children. If such programs work, presumably by
changing a variety of attitudes or life and
educational skills so that these children do not
develop into persistent offenders during their teen
and young adult years, the payoffs for expenditures
now will occur during a period of 10 to 20 years in
the future.

Principles of Designing Out Crime

Examples of successful efforts to reduce crime
listed above show the great variety of crimes
addressed and the methods employed, but in all
cases the principles of situational prevention are
the same. Preventive measures are focused on
reducing opportunities for highly specific forms of
crime. The identification and design of appropriate
measures depend on a clear understanding of the
ways in which offenders are permitted to accomplish
their acts. What works in one situation and for one
kind of crime will not necessarily work in other
situations or for other kinds of crime. Even so,
the wide variety of opportunity-reducing methods
employed fall into 1 of 16 different categories
serving 4 broad objectives of (1) increasing the
difficulty of committing crime, (2) increasing the
risks, (3) reducing the rewards, and (4) reducing
the rationalizations that facilitate crime. These
16 techniques are listed in the table accompanying
this submission, with examples of the application
of each.

The essential tenets of environmental crime
prevention are described above. Crime Prevention
Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and
Situational Crime Prevention are the best-known
varieties. Although the Federal Government gave
some support to CPTED in the 1970's, interest in
environmental crime prevention has languished in
this country, and the most recent developments have
taken place in Canada, Australia, and parts of
Europe, including Great Britain, where Situational
Crime Prevention was developed. Environmental crime
prevention now has a recognized policy role in
these countries. 

One reason for the decline of Federal support for
CPTED was the concern that blocking opportunities
for crime would result not in its elimination, but
merely its displacement to some other target, time,
or place. The net amount of crime would remain the
same although its manifestations might be
different. 

This belief was bolstered by criminological
theories that generally failed to recognize
important situational determinants of crime, such
as the availability of tempting goods to steal and
the absence of adequate guardianship of vulnerable
property and persons. An offender's attitudes and
personality were thought to be the only really
important determinants of crime. 

In recent years, however, there has been rapid
development of new criminological theories that
emphasize the role of opportunities in crime
causation. These theories, which include routine
activity theory and rational choice theory, assert
that, as the number of opportunities for crime
increases, so will the number of crimes committed.
Conversely, as the number of opportunities is
reduced, crime will decline. Displacement is
neither inevitable nor the most likely outcome.
Whether or not it takes place depends on the ease
with which offenders can obtain the same criminal
rewards without greatly increasing their efforts or
risks. Someone who has developed the habit of
shoplifting from the local supermarket will not
inevitably turn to another form of crime, involving
greater risk of detection and more severe
penalties, if the store takes effective preventive
action. Although opportunities for crime may seem
boundless, in fact, particular crimes serve special
purposes for the offender. For example, a thwarted
rapist will not turn to mugging or drug dealing. 

Displacement has been very extensively studied
during the past decade, and a review of 55 separate
research studies undertaken for the Dutch Ministry
of Justice (1994) reached conclusions consistent
with these theoretical arguments. The review found
no evidence of displacement in 22 of the studies.
In the remaining 33, some displacement of crime was
reported, but in no case was it complete. This
conclusion has been echoed in literature reviews
undertaken in Great Britain, Canada, and the United
States. 
The Federal Government Role

This characterization of environmental crime
prevention raises the important question of what
role, if any, the Federal Government has in a form
of crime control that relies so much on local
action by municipalities, transit authorities,
schools, housing authorities, hospitals, airports,
stores, corporations, and businesses. Does the
Government need to be involved in efforts that are
already successful?  

These questions can best be answered by examining
the experience of such countries as the
Netherlands, Great Britain, and Sweden, where
central governments have established dedicated
units within their departments of justice to
promote environmental crime prevention. These units
serve a variety of roles. They encourage research
and dissemination of good practices so that ideas
that have worked in one town or one agency are
tried elsewhere. These units also identify
opportunities for the central government to take 
action. For example, all experts agree that the
most effective way to reduce car theft is to
persuade vehicle manufacturers to produce more
secure vehicles. This is not a matter for a local
municipality or police department. Effective action
would also be difficult to take at a State level.
Rather, this task falls to the Federal Government,
and many similar opportunities exist to influence
manufacturers and service providers at an industry
level. The security of the telephone system, credit
cards, and automatic teller machines are primary
examples. To take proper advantage of these
opportunities, we would propose that a crime
prevention department based on the European model
be established in the U.S. Department of Justice. 

There are currently important preventive
opportunities in the development of effective
personal alarms for repeat victims of domestic
violence and the use of PIN numbers for VCR's and
other electronic equipment that are the targets for
burglary. Both of these initiatives need Government
sponsorship and might be candidates for priority
action by the Federal crime prevention department
we have proposed. 

A Crime Prevention Extension Service

The government crime prevention units recently
established in various European countries are
successfully disseminating good practices. These
countries have highly centralized governments,
however, and they are much smaller than the United
States.
Different structures for disseminating good
practices may be necessary here, and we would
propose the establishment of a crime prevention
extension service along the lines of the
agricultural model that has served this country so
well. Various local private and public agencies
with crime problems will be able to seek or be
offered assistance from this service without having
to comply with any orders or demands. The service
would offer nothing more than suggestions. At first
only a few agencies will adopt innovations; if they
work, others will join. Thus, the proposed service
would be well attuned to the population and
compatible with the existing U.S. Government
structure.

Since crime is disproportionately a metropolitan
problem, a crime prevention extension service
should begin in metropolitan areas in conjunction
with metropolitan universities. Perhaps most
importantly, a crime prevention extension service
should be linked to a criminology or criminal
justice department, yet it should be administered
with a clear mandate to assist people in the
community to prevent crime. Within the university,
the service may also foster ties to such academic
departments as business, architecture, hotel
management, parks administration, hospital
administration, and other departments that train
people in practical industries with crime problems,
so long as practical crime prevention remains the
central focus. In time, the agricultural extension
service might join in carrying crime prevention
ideas to rural areas.

It is essential that the crime prevention extension
service not be distracted by the usual "soft" types
of crime prevention, such as public relations for
police departments, "officer friendly" programs to
meet with school children, and lectures on the need
for more education or social programs. These
methods are soft because they are designed to meet,
with very little thought, the political demands of
anxious people rather than to encourage true crime
prevention based on knowledge or experience.
Instead, a crime prevention extension service must
focus on solving specific problems in specific
settings, perhaps expanding to include the design
of nearby environments. 

The central focus of these efforts should be
private businesses, especially small businesses,
that are the heart and core of crime prevention.
Examples of businesses to be served by a crime
prevention extension service include small shop
owners confronting shoplifting, bar owners dealing
with fights and drunkenness, small factory owners
concerned with danger in the parking lots, and
other companies trying to prevent graffiti,
vandalism, and break-ins. However, such a service
should not be limited to businesses; it should also
include churches, neighborhood associations,
condominium associations, block clubs, downtown
associations, and those organizations whose 
efforts can prevent crime against themselves, their
customers, or others in the vicinity. In addition,
services can be provided to municipal governments,
zoning boards, and others in the planning process;
park administrations; schools; or additional public
and quasi-public agencies.  

The Fit With Community Policing

Many police departments may initially have little 
interest in the proposed extension services or
would claim that they have always provided these
services anyway. It is true that crime prevention
offices are found within police departments, but
these offices are often linked to public relations.
Thus, they have more of a political function than a
serious crime prevention function. Moreover, their
repertoire of crime prevention ideas is generally
narrow: lock your doors, buy an alarm, and don't go
out too late. 

However, change is occurring in more and more
police departments. In particular, the concept of
problem-oriented policing is spreading. This means
seeking to direct police activity toward an
understanding and analysis of "the problem" and
toward finding ways to change the conditions giving
rise to crime, rather than arresting offenders
without an overall strategy. This concept is
compatible with environmental crime prevention, and
many ideas from this field should filter naturally
into the problem-oriented approach to policing. As
the repertoire of prevention ideas develops and as
police departments themselves broaden their
repertoire, we envision much greater cooperation
and interchange between the crime prevention
extension services and police
agencies. In time, therefore, the extension service
could fill a valuable role in the development of
community policing in this country.

------------------------------

The State of the Police

James J. Fyfe, Temple University, Chair
Jack R. Greene, Temple University
Harvey McMurray, North Carolina Central University
Jerome H. Skolnick, University of California-
Berkeley 
Samuel Walker, University of Nebraska-Omaha
Ralph Weisheit, Illinois State University

The State of the Police 
 
Issues

The most visible trend in policing today is the
move to community-and problem-oriented models of
policing (COP/POP). One thing is already clear: as
local police forces adopt COP/POP, care must be
taken to ensure that both police responsiveness and
police
accountability are enhanced. Responsiveness demands
sensitivity to the concerns of local communities,
while accountability demands police adherence to an
overriding ethic of constitutionality and law.
Unfortunately, public anxiety about crime and
disorder can shift the balance. In times of great
social change, responsiveness often overrides
accountability, as long-term constitutional
guarantees and due process safeguards are abandoned
or watered down in ill-advised attempts to provide
quick fixes. It is important to avoid any methods
that could permanently reduce police accountability
when responding to public concerns about crime,
violence, and drugs. 

Traditional professions such as law and medicine
have struck a balance between responsiveness and
accountability that the police should emulate. What
the police lack is a meaningful standard of care
for police operations. For example, police manuals
rarely tell officers how to respond to a crime in
progress. In many departments, an officer's
discretion in arrests, except for those involving
domestic abuse, is not subject to official
guidelines. Few agencies have meaningful guidelines
on how to handle mentally or emotionally disturbed
people. And police vehicle pursuit standards vary
from one jurisdiction to another. 

Given the gravity, urgency, and potentially
catastrophic results of many police field
decisions, the absence of a standard is an omission
of major import. It is comparable to a situation in
which medical researchers, scholars, and
practitioners had concentrated on hospital
administration issues and neglected to develop and
disseminate information about treatment techniques
and strategies. 

The consequences of being without an operational
standard include incomplete recruiting and training
of police officers, inadequate or nonexistent
postemployment training, and insufficient or
unrealistic criteria on which to assess the quality
of police performance. Resentment can grow between
police, who feel they have been unfairly
criticized, and the community, which feels its
members have been poorly treated. 

Policy recommendations

o Endorse COP/POP initiatives. To the extent that
COP/POP involves a partnership between  the police
and the community, the initiatives should be
vigorously supported and  periodically  refined. 

o Support hiring new officers. Hiring 100,000 new
officers under the 1994 Crime Law  strongly
supports COP/POP initiatives; there is no way to
increase police visibility and  interaction with
the community without a significant number of
additional officers.  However, while the police can
be active in attempting to build community, this
task requires  great work at all levels of
government and society.

o Develop standard of care. A standard of care for
police operations, which includes  devising means
of providing citizen input into both formulation
and implementation of  policy, should be
systematically developed and disseminated. The
first step is developing a  methodology to help
police, the public, and government officials
identify desirable, realistic  outcomes of police
work, the means most likely to attain these
outcomes, and techniques for  evaluating per-
formance in terms of these goals. 

o Increase civilian advisory boards. The trend
toward civilian police advisory boards and  review
panels appears to be completely in line with the
philosophies and logic underlying  COP/POP. The
boards need to be rigorously evaluated to determine
what effect they have  on policing and police-
community relations and which of the boards'
methods succeed or  fail. 

o Oppose exceptions to the exclusionary rule. Good-
faith exceptions or other modifications  that would
weaken the exclusionary rule in evaluating a police
officer's actions should be  eliminated. "Good
faith" clauses tend to encourage and even reward
police
incompetence  and failure to learn fundamental
constitutional principles. They wrongly assume that
courts  can identify officers who act in bad faith.
Experience teaches that people who act in bad 
faith rarely testify in good faith about their
misconduct. In every field of human endeavor,  the
major purpose of education, training, and
discipline is to replace good faith mistakes  with
adherence to professional standards.

o Combat police abuse. The custom-and-practice
authority granted to the Justice Department  in the
1994 Crime Law is an invaluable means of combating
police abuse. The provision  eliminates the
requirement that the Civil Rights Division of the
Justice
Department have  "standing" as an injured party to
initiate civil litigation against police for
brutality or other  unconstitutional misconduct.

o Perform analyses of causes of crime. Meaningful
analysis of the social and economic  causes of
crime and disorder should be conducted to develop a
comprehensive approach to  dealing with them. In
many instances, new officers, who were hired to
enhance community  relations, may find no community
exists. The police cannot rebuild communities by 
themselves. 

o Expand evaluation research. The Federal
Government should continue and expand support for
evaluation research of policing and dissemination
of its findings, with emphasis on: implementation
of community- and  problem-oriented policing, crime
causation and prevention, development of a standard
of  care, accountability issues discussed here, gun
detection, and police leadership.

The State of the Police

Overview

This task force was convened in October 1994 at the
request of American Society of Criminology
President Freda Adler. The mandate of the task
force was to describe and critique the current
state of policing in the United States and make
suggestions for future directions in police policy,
operations, and research. 

The task force's principal conclusions and
recommendations focus primarily on action that may
be taken at the Federal level. They are: 

o To the extent that the concept of community- and
problem-oriented models of policing  (COP/POP)
involves a partnership between the police and the
community, rather than a  continuation of the
estrangement that has often characterized relations
between police and  community, we support it
vigorously and recommend continued efforts to
refine it. 

o We recommend development and dissemination of a
standard of care for police operations. 

o We vigorously oppose any good-faith exceptions or
other modifications that would weaken  the
exclusionary rule.

o We strongly endorse the custom-and-practice
authority granted to the U.S. Department of Justice
in the 1994 Crime Law.

o We support the trend to civilian police advisory
boards and review panels. 

o We strongly support the 1994 Crime Law's plan to
hire 100,000 officers committed to  COP/POP, but: 

o We vigorously oppose any suggestion that the
addition of these officers for COP/POP is the only
solution to the problems of crime and disorder now
plaguing the United States.

o We recommend meaningful analysis of the social
and economic causes of crime and disorder and the
development of a comprehensive approach to dealing
with them. 

o We recommend that the Federal Government continue
to expand support for evaluation research and
dissemination of its findings--with emphasis on
implementation of community- and problem-
oriented policing, crime causation and prevention,
development of a standard of care, the
accountability issues discussed in this paper, gun
detection, and police leadership. 

Policing in 1995 

Clearly, the most visible trend in policing today
is the move to community- and problem-oriented
models of policing (COP/POP). To the extent that
COP/POP involves a partnership between the police
and the community, rather than a continuation of
the estrangement that has often characterized
relations between police and community, we support
it vigorously and recommend continued efforts to
refine it. 

Responsiveness and accountability. As policing
moves toward adoption of COP/POP, care must be
taken to assure that both police responsiveness and
police accountability are enhanced.
Responsiveness demands sensitivity to the concerns
of local communities, while accountability demands
police adherence to an overriding ethic of
constitutionality and law. The priority order of
these two considerations should be clear and
unvarying:
accountability should never be sacrificed in the
name of
responsiveness. Unfortunately, especially in times
of great social change, responsiveness often
overrides accountability, as 
long-term constitutional guarantees and due process
safeguards are abandoned or watered down in ill-
advised attempts to provide quick fixes to
increased public anxiety about crime and disorder.
This is such a time and, later in this report, we
make several specific recommendations involving the
need to avoid responding to current public concerns
about crime, violence, and drugs in ways that
permanently reduce police accountability. 

The Need To Develop an Operational Standard of Care

The traditional professions--law and medicine--have
struck a balance between responsiveness and
accountability that should be emulated by the
police. The first step in this direction involves
the development and dissemination of a meaningful
standard of care for police operations. This
includes devising means of encouraging citizen
input into both the formulation of policy[1] and
the
manner in which it is implemented. The absence of
such a standard is a major cause of police-
community friction and violence, and it contributes
greatly to the stress, frustrations, and anger
among rank-and-file officers.

There is, by now, a long bookshelf of research,
theorizing, and law that has profoundly and
positively affected the manner in which police
administrators deploy officers and use their other
resources. Unfortunately, except for legislative
and judicial interventions, surprisingly little
effort has been devoted to guiding officers'
discretion in the field. Existing police
professional standards, such as those of the
Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement
Agencies, Inc., deal primarily with administrative
issues rather than with the direct delivery of
police services by line officers. Given the
gravity, urgency, and potentially catastrophic
results of many police field decisions, this is an
omission of major dimensions: it is as though
medical researchers, scholars, and practitioners
had concentrated on hospital administration issues
and neglected to develop and disseminate
information about treatment techniques and
strategies. 

The lack of focus on street-level policing is also
ironic considering that what little has been done
has been so successful. Despite the increased
violence on U.S. streets over the past few decades,
administrative rules governing officers' use of
deadly force (and enhanced tactical training) have
greatly reduced bloodshed between police and
citizens, as has the development of tactics and
strategies for hostage and barricade situations.

For many critical operations in many police
agencies, attempts to develop standards of care
have been isolated or never undertaken. For
example:

o Police manuals rarely tell officers how to
respond to crimes in progress. 

o Officers' arrest discretion, especially--but not
solely--in situations excluding domestic abuse,  is
not often subject to any official guidance.

o Many agencies provide officers with no meaningful
guidance about how to handle  encounters with
mentally or emotionally disturbed persons and 
violent subjects without using more force than  
necessary.

o Police vehicle pursuit standards have been
developed, but they vary dramatically and even  are
contradictory in some places. The attorney general
of New Jersey, for example, issued a  directive
that, for all intents and purposes, prohibits
officers from engaging in pursuits of  traffic
violators. A few months later, the State's supreme
court gave its imprimatur to such  chases as long
as they do not involve demonstrably reckless police
behavior.2

Consequences of the missing standard of care. The
absence of an operational standard of care has
major effects:

o The knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to
do the police job well cannot be described  with
any reasonable degree of precision. Consequently:

o Police recruiting and training generally are
inexact, least-common-denominator processes that
cannot be objectively validated. 

o Existing hiring standards are not comparable to
those of
occupations with apparently similar line-level
decisionmaking authority and responsibility (e.g.,
teachers, social workers, prosecutors, public
defenders, and probation and parole officers).
Instead, police are most often equated with fire
and sanitation workers, who have dangerous jobs but
little decisionmaking   responsibility.

o Postemployment training of U.S. police officers
is nonexistent in many places (especially rural
areas) and, virtually everywhere, it is minimal.
U.S. police serve the most heterogenous and well-
armed population in the world but receive less (and
less consistent) training than police in other
western democracies. 

o Much police work is done on an ad hoc basis,
rather than on the basis of clearly enunciated 
standards.

o The most critical police decisions become on-the-
spot judgment calls. These frequently  result in
mistakes--real or perceived--that subject the
police to criticism and liability for  violating
vague professional standards and lead the courts to
fashion the industry standard of  care.

o Resentment grows between police, who feel that
they have been unfairly criticized, and the 
community, which feels that its members have been
poorly treated. 

o Administrators have no meaningful standards for
evaluating officers. 

o Citizens and government officials have no
meaningful standards for assessing the quality of 
police services, and:

o Often have unrealistic views of what police can
accomplish. 

o Often are frustrated with police service because
of problems that cannot possibly be solved by the
police (e.g., they blame police for levels of
violence police cannot reasonably be expected to
affect).

o Accept baseless police claims that reductions in
crime are attributable to police
overaggressiveness, 
coming to equate tough policing with
effectiveness and regarding more realistic and
humane styles of policing as ineffective and soft
on crime. 

Developing a standard of care. Given the great
diversity among communities served by U.S. police
departments, we recognize that it may not be
possible to develop a universal statement of the
role of the police. At the same time, we recommend
development and
dissemination of a standard of care for police
operations. This should begin with construction of
a methodology that helps police and the consumers
of their services (i.e., officials and the public)
to identify:

o Desirable and realistic outcomes of police work.

o The means most likely to attain these outcomes.

o Methods of evaluating police performance in terms
of the extent to which desirable outcomes are
attained and/or (especially in hopeless cases) the
extent to which police have followed the methods
most likely to result in success.  

Accountability

As suggested above, our experience as social
scientists and police practitioners leads to
several extremely important recommendations related
to accountability. There is a temptation to "take
the handcuffs off the police" when there is great
public concern about crime and violence. This
should be avoided because there is no evidence that
such handcuffs hinder the crime fighting ability of
the police. No study has ever shown that any United
States Supreme Court decision, for example, has
ever affected police effectiveness or public safety
in any way. Instead, these decisions serve only the
critical functions of defining the extent of
citizens' freedoms.

Consequently, we vigorously oppose any good-faith
exceptions or other modifications that would weaken
the exclusionary rule. As scholars, we have seen no
research that shows that the exclusionary rule
results in dismissals or acquittals in more than 2
percent of criminal prosecutions. In addition,
proposals for good-faith exceptions are fatally
flawed in their assumption that courts can identify
officers who act in bad faith: people who act in
bad faith rarely testify in good faith about their
misconduct. We strongly endorse the custom-and-
practice authority granted to the U.S. Department
of Justice in the 1994 Crime Law. In effect, this
provision of the new law eliminates the requirement
that the Civil Rights Division of the U.S.
Department of Justice has "standing" as an injured
party to initiate civil litigation against police
for brutality or other unconstitutional misconduct.
This is an invaluable means of combating police
abuse, and we welcome it. 

We support the trend to civilian police advisory
boards and review panels. The recent widespread
adoption of these review mechanisms is evidence of
growing recognition that they are proper, needed,
and completely in accord with the philosophies and
logic underlying COP/POP. We urge evaluation of the
effects of these boards on policing and police-
community relations as well as research to
determine what distinguishes between success and
failure in the operation of these boards.

Community- and Problem-Oriented Policing

To the extent that COP/POP requires more--and less
adversarial--interaction between police and
community, we strongly support the 1994 Crime Law's
plan to hire 100,000 officers committed to COP/POP.
Over the last generation, police workload (calls
for service, street crime, and disorder) has
increased dramatically both in number and
complexity. During the same period, personnel
resources in much of the country have not
increased, especially when one controls for the
reduced working hours (usually from 48 hours a week
to 40 hours a week) won by police labor groups.
There is no way to increase police visibility and
interaction with the community without a
significant number of additional officers.  

In making this recommendation we recognize that,
like past
proposals and anticipated panaceas, neither COP/POP
nor the addition of 100,000 officers can solve all
the problems we ask police to address. The success
of community policing depends in large measure on
the strength of the community involved 
as well as on the capabilities of the police.
Unfortunately, the jurisdictions most in need of
community policing are not strong communities in
the traditional sense. In such places, whatever
community exists is often estranged from the
police. Certainly the police can be active in
attempting to build community, but this is a task
that requires great work at all levels of
government and society. We note, for example, that
"hate crime" is a troubling apparent trend in many
pluralistic and/or "changing" communities. This
certainly strikes a community at its core and
weakens any COP/POP operations. We need to know
more about it and what to do about it if COP/POP is
to succeed. 

Thus, we vigorously oppose any suggestion that the
addition of 100,000 officers for COP/POP is a
comprehensive approach to the problems of crime and
disorder now plaguing the United States. Such a
view ignores the fact that, unlike courts and
corrections, police services (especially under
COP/POP models) include much that is not directly
related to crime. Worse, such a view is a
distraction from the social and economic causes of
crime and disorder that must be addressed in any
meaningful approach to what are now viewed as
police problems. The addition of more officers to
the ranks of the police should not be an excuse to
avoid doing this. These new officers may be
necessary if COP/POP is to be implemented. More
importantly, however, we recommend meaningful
analysis of the social and economic causes of crime
and disorder and development of a comprehensive
approach to dealing with them.

Evaluation Research

Police throughout the United States are engaged in
all sorts of innovative programs and operations. We
have encountered a wide variety of imaginative
COP/POP-based quality-of-life and fear-of-crime
programs in urban jurisdictions, but their effects
are unknown. Almost certainly, there also are many
innovative programs among smaller, more flexible
rural agencies that, without
articulating it, have long been involved in
COP/POP, but the isolation of these agencies keeps
their successes a secret. Police in some
jurisdictions suspect--but do not know--that recent
decreases in crimes typically committed by
juveniles may be associated with increased
enforcement of truancy laws. One agency has
provided joggers and other volunteers with cellular
phones that can be used to summon police quickly to
crimes or other emergencies that they might observe
in parks and other public places; no analysis of
the results is in progress. 

Absent such analysis, it is impossible to isolate
the effects of these programs. Absent publication,
police agencies are precluded from learning from
the experiences of their colleagues in other
places. In the current fiscal environment, local
jurisdictions frequently consider formal evaluation
and publication of results to be an expensive
luxury. Such a view is unfortunate but perhaps
understandable at the local level where officials
are primarily concerned with their own
constituencies. It should not prevail at the
Federal level, however, where official concern
should extend to all Americans. In recent years,
however, Federal funding for police research and
publication has been virtually nil, typically
averaging about 7 cents per American per year.
Given the prominence of crime and justice issues on
the national political scene as well as the
disproportionately great and positive impact of
what has been done, this is a major default. 

Among federally funded police research currently in
progress, we are particularly optimistic about the
potential results of work designed to assist police
in finding illegal concealed weapons. We urge that
this work continue and that it be conducted in ways
that adhere to constitutional standards. In
addition to a much needed focus on the line level
of policing,  research and evaluation should also
examine police leadership and the executive,
managerial, and supervisory qualities and
strategies most closely associated with successful
policing (once success is adequately defined, of
course). Thus, we recommend that the Federal
Government continue to expand support for
evaluation research and dissemination of its
findings with emphasis on implementation of
community- and problem-oriented policing, crime
causation and prevention, development of a standard
of care, the 
accountability issues discussed in this paper, gun
detection, and police leadership. Research and
evaluation findings should be broadly disseminated
to practitioners by the U.S. Department of Justice
through, for example, Research in Brief reports and
regional meetings.

Notes

1. As we define it, a police operational standard
of care is a systematically developed and
disseminated body of knowledge, similar to those of
the traditional professions and such emergency
occupations as the fire service and aviation. It
should provide meaningful guidance to line
personnel who face the need to make critical
decisions. As such, it cannot be a set of hard-and-
fast rules, which would unreasonably limit line
discretion. Instead, it is a set of goal-oriented
guidelines to be developed, applied, and enforced
under the criteria of objective reasonableness
historically employed in these other vocations.

2. We are well aware that some of our criticisms
appear contrary to practices described in much of
the scholarly literature of policing and that our
comments do not apply to each and every U.S. police
agency. At the same time, we are confident that our
observations apply to most American policing and
caution that it is risky to generalize from the
departments studied by scholars to the universe of
U.S. police agencies. By definition, police
agencies cited in the literature differ from all
others: they have opened their books, records,
operations, and personnel to outsiders.
Consequently, as our occasional opportunities to
study agencies that have been involuntary research
subjects corroborate, agencies that have
volunteered to cooperate with research may
generally be presumed to be both more progressive
and more confident of their practices than are
agencies that have remained closed to scrutiny.

------------------------------ 

A Crime Control Rationale for Reinvesting in
Community Corrections

Joan Petersilia, University of California-Irvine,
Chair

A Crime Control Rationale for Reinvesting in
Community 
Corrections 
 
Issues

Two years ago Congress passed the most ambitious
crime bill in the Nation's history, the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. It
allocated $22 billion to expand prisons, impose
longer sentences, hire more police, and, to a
lesser extent, fund
prevention programs. The bill was later amended,
and nearly all of the $5 billion targeted for
prevention programs was diverted into prison
construction and law enforcement. Although such
tough-on-crime legislation has political appeal, it
finds almost no support among criminal justice
practitioners and scholars. 

Recently, organizations as diverse as the
International Association of Chiefs of Police, the
U.S. Conference of Mayors, the American Bar
Association, the National Governors Association,
the League of Cities, the RAND Corporation, the
National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the
Campaign for an Effective Crime Policy, and the
National Research Council have all voiced
opposition to the approach. In addition, 85 percent
of nationally surveyed prison wardens--who stand to
benefit by this legislation--said that elected
officials are not offering effective solutions to
America's crime problem. 

Some people argue that the current proposals are
racist or that they cost too much; however, nearly
everyone agrees that they fail to prevent young
people from entering and continuing a life of
crime, and they leave the vast majority of
criminals, who are serving sentences on probation
and parole, unaffected. 

Criminologists have long observed that age 18 is
the year of peak criminality. Analysis recently
completed by Alfred Blumstein at Carnegie-Mellon
University showed that today's cohort of 18-year-
olds is the smallest it will be for at least the
next 15 years. In 1996 the number is going to start
climbing, and the biggest growth will occur in the
number of African-American children who are now 4
to 9 years old. As more young people are recruited
into and retained in a criminal lifestyle, the
ability of back-end responses (such as
imprisonment) to increase public safety is severely
limited because of the replenishing supply of young
people who are entering into criminal careers. 

The second, and equally important, reason why
current Federal efforts will fail is that they
focus exclusively on prisons as a corrections
strategy, ignoring the fact that most criminals are
serving probation and parole sentences. In 1991
about 16 percent of all adult probationers were
convicted of violent crimes, as were 26 percent of
parolees. This means that on any given day in 1991,
there were resident in U.S. communities an
estimated 435,000 probationers and 155,000 parolees
who had been convicted of violent crimes. In
contrast to these 590,000 probationers and parolees
in the community, only 372,500 violent offenders
resided in prison. And in 1993, 72 percent of all
identified criminals were serving sentences in the
community, on probation or parole. Even though the
number of prisons has quadrupled in the past
decade, prisoners are still less than one-fifth of
the convict population, and the vast majority of
offenders remain in the community. If effectively
controlling crime--as opposed to exacting
retribution and justice--is the goal, efforts must
be focused on the community, where offenders are
reporting to probation and parole officers. 

Probationers represent a serious continued risk to
public safety. The majority of probationers are
convicted felons, have prior criminal records, and
are likely to be substance and alcohol abusers with
few marketable skills. Continued indifference to
their behavior means missing the opportunity to
intervene positively--and promises their eventual
imprisonment. In addition, by not focusing on
providing probationers with an appropriate level
and type of supervision, crime in the community
will not be abated. Current policy simply waits
until their criminality escalates to the point of
incarceration, which has been proven to be costly
and ineffective in reducing crime. 

Policy recommendations

o "Surveillance plus treatment" programs. Such
programs should be developed for  drug-involved
probationers, including offenders   who are
convicted of drug possession and use. Program
models now exist that are effective  in reducing
recidivism rates, and the public supports
rehabilitation over incarceration for  such
offenders (but not drug traffickers). The cost-
benefit tradeoff between prison and  community
corrections is among the highest   for this
subpopulation.

o Convincing the public. The public's trust that
probation and parole can be meaningful, credible
sanctions must be regained. During the past decade,
many jurisdictions developed "intermediate
sanctions" as a response to prison crowding. These
programs (e.g., house arrest, electronic
monitoring, intensive supervision) were designed to
be community-based sanctions that were tougher than
regular probation, but less stringent and expensive
than prison. In the few instances where the
organizational capacity was created to ensure
compliance with court-ordered conditions, these
programs reduced recidivism by 20 to 30 percent.

o Funding. Sufficient financial resources must be
provided so that the designed  programs, combining
both treatment and surveillance, can be
implemented. Adequate  monetary resources are
essential to obtaining and sustaining judicial
support and achieving  program success. The
resources needed will be forthcoming only if the
public believes the  programs are both effective
and punishing.

A Crime Control Rationale for Reinvesting in
Community Corrections

Introduction and Overview

Two years ago Congress passed the most ambitious
crime bill in our Nation's history, the  Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. It
allocated $22 billion to expand prisons, impose
longer sentences, hire more police, and, to a
lesser extent, fund prevention programs. But as
part of the Republicans' "Contract with America,"
the Act was significantly revised, and the money
allocated to prevention programs was scrapped. The
amended bill--the price tag of which rose to $30
billion--shifted nearly all of the $5 billion
targeted for prevention programs into prison
construction and law enforcement. As a Los Angeles
Times opinion piece concluded of the whole matter:
"what started out last legislative season as a
harsh and punitive bill has gotten downright
Draconian" (Schiraldi, 1995). 

While such tough-on-crime legislation has political
appeal, it finds almost no support among criminal
justice practitioners and scholars. They are
uniformly agreed that such efforts--which endorse
an "enforcement model" to the sacrifice of all
else--will do little to curb crime. In recent
months organizations as 
diverse as the International Association of Chiefs
of 
Police (IACP), the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the
American Bar Association (ABA), the National
Governors Association, the League of Cities, the
RAND Corporation, the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency (NCCD), the Campaign for an Effective
Crime Policy (CECP), and the National Research
Council have all voiced opposition to the approach.

Even prison wardens (who stand to win) uniformly
reject the crime-fighting solutions coming out of
Washington. In a recent national survey of prison
wardens, 85 percent of those surveyed said that
elected officials are not offering effective
solutions to America's crime problem (Simon, 1994).
Chase Riveland, Washington State director of
corrections, said that focusing only on prisons and
ignoring the rest of the system is "drive-by
legislation, at best." And Jerome Skolnick,
president of the American Society of Criminology
(ASC), spoke of the Federal efforts in his 1994
presidential address and entitled the speech, "What
Not to Do About Crime." 

What is wrong with the current proposals? Some
argue that they are racist, others argue that they
cost too much, but nearly everyone agrees they have
two major flaws: (1) they fail to prevent young
people from entering and continuing a life of
crime, and (2) they leave the vast majority of
criminals, who are serving sentences on probation
and parole, unaffected. 

Criminologists have long observed that age 18 is
the year of peak criminality. Analysis recently
completed by Alfred Blumstein at Carnegie-Mellon
showed that today we have the smallest cohort of
18-year-olds we will see for at least the next 15
years. In 1996, the number is going to start going
up, and the biggest growth will occur in the number
of African-American children who are now 4 to 9
years old. Blumstein (1994) recently observed: 

These young people are being less well educated and
socialized, and as a result are easy recruits for
the booming crack cocaine industry, where weapons
are a business accessory for an increasing number
of youths. The result will be a steep increase in
juvenile and young adult violent crime, unless we
begin investing in community-based programs to
better socialize kids when their parents are not
doing so. This is a population crying out for our
attention, and, as a society we need to find a
means to divert them from becoming as violent as
their big brothers.

As more young people are recruited into and
retained in a criminal lifestyle, the ability of
back-end responses (such as imprisonment) to
increase public safety is severely limited because
of the replenishing supply of young people who are
entering into criminal careers. 

The second, and equally important, reason why
current Federal efforts will fail is that they
focus exclusively on prisons as a corrections
strategy, ignoring the fact that most criminals are
serving probation and parole sentences. In 1993
there were just under 5 million adult (convicted)
criminals--or about 1 in 
every 39 Americans. Seventy-two percent of all
identified criminals were not in prison, but
serving sentences in the community on probation or
parole supervision. Even though we have quadrupled
the number of prisoners in the past decade,
prisoners are still less than one-fifth of the
convict population, and the vast majority of
offenders remain in the community amongst us. If we
are to
effectively control crime--as opposed to exacting
retribution and justice--we must focus our efforts
on where the offenders are, which is in the
community reporting to probation and parole
officers. 

Despite the fact that both crime bills were touted
by their proponents as comprehensive approaches to
the crime problem, neither the 1994 Crime Act nor
the 1995 "Taking Back Our Streets" proposal even
mentions probation or parole, much less provides
funding or direction for revising programs or
practices. Moreover, the Federal bill will likely
take money away from community corrections budgets,
which are already at a dangerously low level, to
fund the expanded prison space required to comply
with the  Federal mandate requiring State prisoners
to serve 85 percent of their sentences (the so-
called "truth in sentencing" provision).  

This policy brief addresses the public safety
consequences of current probation and parole
practices. It contends that current crime policies
are neither comprehensive nor can they be effective
unless we focus on the needs and risks posed by
probationers and parolees. Whether we are able to
control the crime propensities of these offenders
is critical to the effectiveness of any anti-crime
program. 

We must rethink the types of programs and funding
levels that are appropriate for the kinds of
clients these agencies now encounter. The majority
of probationers are convicted felons, have prior
criminal records, and are likely to be substance
and alcohol abusers with few marketable skills. If
we continue to ignore their behavior--and miss the
opportunity to intervene positively--we are
relatively assured of imprisoning them eventually.
Current policy simply waits until their criminality
escalates to the point of needing imprisonment, and
such policies have now proven costly and
ineffective at reducing crime. 

The author suggests developing "surveillance plus
treatment" programs for drug-involved probationers,
including offenders who are convicted of drug
possession and use, but not trafficking. Evaluation
research suggests that we now have program models
that are effective at reducing their recidivism
rates, that the public is supportive of
rehabilitation as opposed to incarceration for such
offenders, and that the cost-benefit tradeoffs
between prison and community corrections are among
the highest for that subpopulation. 

Who Is On Probation and Parole? 
A Profile of the Population

There is a huge misunderstanding of the public
safety risks and needs posed by offenders currently
under community supervision, particularly those on
probation. Some might believe that while there are
a large number of persons on probation and parole,
the public safety risk they pose as a group is
minimal. The public often assumes that probation is
a sentencing alternative only for misdemeanants or
"non-dangerous" offenders. 

Many also erroneously assume that as prison
populations have grown, those remaining in the
community have become increasingly less serious,
and hence less in need of supervision. It might
seem logical that since prison populations have
quadrupled over the past decade, those remaining in
the community would be increasingly less serious
because the more serious offenders would have been
skimmed off and sentenced to prison. Unfortunately,
this is not true. As shown in figure 1, populations
in all four components of the corrections system
have grown at record rates since 1983. And the 3 to
1 ratio of community-based to institutional
populations has remained relatively stable for over
a decade.

Furthermore, analysis shows that the probation
population has become increasingly serious if
judged by prior criminal record, current conviction
crime, or substance abuse histories (Petersilia et
al., 1985). The truth of the matter is that the
overall U.S. population has grown and a greater
proportion of U.S. citizens are being convicted, so
that all corrections populations have grown in size
simultaneously. 

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) tracks
sentences handed down by the courts in felony
convictions. The agency reports that in 1986 the
courts granted probation to 46 percent of all
convicted felons (Langan and Cunniff, 1992). As
shown in figure 2, about 30 percent of these
defendants were also required to serve some jail
time. Considering different crime types, about 6
percent of murderers were placed on probation, as
were 20 percent of convicted rapists. Twenty
percent of convicted robbers and 40 percent of
burglars were similarly sentenced to probation
rather than to active prison terms. The average
sentence to probation was just under 40 months, and
an average jail term (where it was imposed) was 6
months.

Table 1 shows the conviction crimes of all adults
under correctional supervision during 1991. 

Table 1 shows that about 16 percent of probationers
were convicted of violent crimes, as were 26
percent of parolees. This means that on any given
day in the United States in 1991, there were an
estimated 435,000 probationers and 155,000 parolees
residing in local communities who had been
convicted of violent crime--or over half a million
offenders. If we compare that to the number of
violent offenders residing in prison during the
same year, we see that there were approximately
372,500 offenders convicted of violent crime in
prison, and approximately 590,000 outside prison
and in the community on probation and parole.
Overall, we can conclude that nearly three times as
many violent offenders (1.02 million) were residing
in the community as were incarcerated in prison
(372,500). These numbers make painfully clear why 
a failure to provide adequate funding for community
corrections invariably places the public at risk. 

Of course, the type of crime an offender is
convicted of does not necessarily equate with his
or her risk of recidivism. Patrick Langan at BJS
tracked for 3 years a sample representing nearly
80,000 felons granted probation in 1986. Just over
40 percent of the probationers were classified by
probation departments as needing either "intensive"
or "maximum" supervision--meaning they 
appeared to be at a high risk of recidivating based
on their prior criminal records and need for
services. If probationers are growing in numbers
and becoming more serious, they are in need of more
supervision, not less. But less is exactly what
they have gotten over the past decade.

Despite the unprecedented growth in probation
populations and their more serious clientele,
probation budgets have not grown. From 1977 to
1990, prison, jail, parole, and probation
populations all about tripled in size. Yet only
spending for prisons and jails had accelerated
growth in overall government expenditures. In 1990
prison and jail spending accounted for 2 cents of
every State and local dollar spent, twice the
amount spent in 1977. Spending for probation and
parole accounted for two-tenths of 1 cent of every
dollar spent in 1990, unchanged from what it was in
1977 (Langan, 1994). Today, although nearly three-
fourths of correctional clients are in the
community, about one-tenth of the correctional
budget goes to supervise them. 

The increase in populations, coupled with stagnant
or decreasing funding, means that caseloads (the
number of offenders an officer is responsible for
supervising) keep increasing. Although the 1967
President's Crime Commission recommended that ideal
caseloads be about 30 to 1, national averages are
now approaching 150 to 1 for probation and 80 to 1
for parole. And in some communities, ratios are
much higher. In Los  Angeles County, for example,
where nearly 70,000 adults are on probation,
funding cutbacks have resulted in caseloads
reaching several hundred and few direct services. A
recent report noted that 60 percent of all Los
Angeles probationers are tracked solely by computer
and have no contact with an officer (U.S. Advisory
Commission, 1993). Texas reports that it has about
400,000 adults on probation, 95 percent of whom are
on regular supervision, meaning they are seen once
every 3 months. 

Nationally, BJS reports that three out of five
felony probationers see a probation officer no more
than once a month, at best, because actual contacts
are often less than the number prescribed. Because
of underfunding and large caseloads, probation
supervision in many large jurisdictions amounts to
simply monitoring for rearrest. As Clear and Braga
(1995: 423) recently wrote: "Apparently, community
supervision has been seen as a kind of elastic
resource that could handle whatever numbers of
offenders the system required it to." 

But neglect in funding has had serious
consequences. As caseloads rise, there is less
opportunity for personal contact between officer
and offender, limiting any ability of the officer
to bring about positive change in the offender, or
refer him or her to appropriate community-based
resources and programs (which,
incidentally, are also being reduced). Court-
ordered fines and restitution don't get paid and
community service doesn't get performed--all of
which further tarnish probation's image as being
too lenient and lacking in credibility.

Robert Kelgord, chief probation officer in
Sacramento, California, after reporting that more
than half of the probationers he is responsible for
go unsupervised, described the overall situation as
follows: 

On each judicial day hundreds of California judges
sentence thousands of offenders to probation,
sternly enumerating the many conditions of
probation that are to be enforced by the probation
officer. Unfortunately, virtually all of these 
offenders will never see a probation officer and
there will be absolutely no enforcement of the
court-ordered conditions. Equally unfortunate is
that all of the players in this drama--especially
the offender--understand that the offenders will go
unsupervised, will have no accountability to the
courts, and will, in a high percentage of the
cases, simply reoffend (Commission on Future of
California Courts, 1993: 159).

Lack of services and supervision undoubtedly
contributes to high recidivism rates. It has been
continually shown that there is a "highly
significant statistical relationship between the
extent to which probationers received needed
services and the success of probation" (Comptroller
General, 1976: 25). As services have dwindled,
recidivism rates have climbed. In the national BJS
study mentioned earlier, Langan and Cunniff (1992)
found that 43 percent of probationers were
rearrested for a felony within 3 years of receiving
a probationary sentence. The total group of some
79,000 probationers was responsible for nearly
34,000 arrests, including 632 arrests for murder,
474 for rape, and 5,500 for robbery and assaults.
By the end of the 3-year period, 26 percent of the
probationers had been sent to prison, another 10
percent to jail, and an additional 10 percent were
designated absconders with unknown whereabouts.
Overall, 46 percent of felony probationers were
classified as "failures." It is no wonder--the same
study shows that while 53 percent of the sample was
characterized as having a drug abuse problem, only
14 percent of the sample
participated in any required drug treatment during
the 3-year followup period.

Parolees fare no better. BJS statisticians Allen
Beck and Bernard Shipley (1989) tracked 108,580
parolees released from prison in 1983. The sample
represented more than half of all released State
prisoners that year. They found that within 3
years, 62 percent of them had been rearrested for a
felony or serious misdemeanor (23 percent for a
violent crime), 47 percent were reconvicted, and 42
percent were returned to prison or jail. By the end
of 1986, those prisoners who were rearrested
averaged an additional 4.8 new charges. 

Another means to gauge the contribution of
probationers and parolees to the crime problem is
to examine the "criminal justice status" of
offenders at the time they committed or were
arrested for their current crime. Numerous BJS
reports provide that information, and the relevant
figures are summarized in figure 3. They attest to
the contribution of probationers and parolees to
the "crime problem," and to the public safety
consequences of reducing funding for community
corrections. For example, 31 percent of persons on
death row in 1992 report committing their murders
while under probation or parole supervision.
Leaving such offenders "unattended" is not only bad
policy, it leaves many victims in its wake.

The high failure rates of probationers and parolees
also contribute significantly to prison crowding.
Current estimates show that between 30 and 50
percent of all new prison admissions are
community supervision failures. Indeed, offenders
who fail under community supervision are the
fastest growing component of the prison population.

What Can We Do? A Proposal To Develop an Integrated
Treatment/Control Program for Drug Offenders

The grim situation described above is known to most
individuals who work in the justice system or study
it. Until we curb the criminal activities of the
three-fourths of criminals who reside in the
community, real reductions in crime or prison
commitments are unlikely. Just as there is growing
agreement about the nature of the problem, there is
also an emerging consensus about how to address it.

We need to first regain the public's trust that
probation and parole can be meaningful, credible
sanctions. During the past decade, many
jurisdictions developed "intermediate sanctions" as
a response to prison crowding. These programs (for
example, house arrest, electronic monitoring,
intensive supervision) were  designed to be
community-based sanctions that were tougher than
regular probation, but less stringent and expensive
than prison. The program models were good and could
have worked, except for one critical factor: they
were usually implemented without creating an
organizational capacity to ensure compliance with
the court-ordered conditions. 

Intermediate sanctions were designed with smaller
caseloads, enabling officers to provide both
services and monitoring for new criminal activity,
but they never were given the resources needed to
enforce the sanctions or to provide necessary
treatment. When the court ordered offenders to
participate in drug treatment, for example, many
probation and parole officers could not comply with
the request because local treatment programs were
unavailable. Similarly, when the court ordered
fines or restitution to be paid or community
service to be performed, it often was ignored
because of a lack of personnel to follow through
and monitor such requirements. Over time, what was
intended as tougher community corrections in most
jurisdictions did not materialize, thereby further
tarnishing probation's and parole's image. (For a
complete review of this experience, see Petersilia
and Turner, 1993; Clear and Braga, 1995.) And while
most judges still report being anxious to use
tougher, community-based programs as alternatives
to routine probation or prison, most are skeptical
that the programs promised "on paper" will be
actually delivered in practice. As a result, some
intermediate sanction programs are beginning to
fall into disuse. 

But not all programs have had this experience. In a
few instances, communities invested in intermediate
sanctions and made the necessary treatment and work
programs available to offenders. And, most
importantly, the programs worked: in programs where
offenders received both surveillance (for example,
drug tests) and relevant treatment, recidivism was
reduced 20 to 30 percent (Petersilia and Turner,
1993). Recent program evaluations in Texas,
Wisconsin, Oregon, and Colorado have found
similarly encouraging results (Clear and Braga,
1995). Even in BJS's national probation followup
study, it was found that if probationers were
participating in or making progress in treatment
programs, they were less likely to have a new
arrest (38 percent) than either those drug
offenders who had made no progress (66 percent) or
who were not ordered to be tested or treated (48
percent). 

There now exists rather solid empirical evidence
that ordering offenders into treatment, and getting
them to participate, reduces recidivism. So, the
first order of business must be to allocate
sufficient resources so that designed programs
(incorporating both surveillance and treatment) can
be implemented. Sufficient monetary resources are
essential to obtaining and sustaining judicial
support and achieving program success.

Once we have that in place, we need to create a
public climate to support a reinvestment in
community corrections. Good community corrections
cost money, and we should be honest about that. We
currently spend about $200 per year, per
probationer for supervision. It is no wonder that
recidivism rates are so high. At a minimum,
effective treatment programs cost about $12,000 to
$14,000 per year. Those resources will be
forthcoming only if the public believes that the
programs are both effective and punishing.

Public opinion is often cited by officials as the
reason for supporting expanded prison policies.
According to officials, the public demands a "get
tough on crime" policy, which is synonymous with
sending more offenders to prison for longer terms.
We must publicize recent evidence showing that
offenders--whose opinion on such matters is
critical for deterrence--judge some intermediate
sanctions as more punishing than prison. Surveys of
offenders in Minnesota, Arizona, New Jersey,
Oregon, and Texas reveal that offenders who are
asked to equate criminal sentences judge certain
types of community punishments as more severe than
prison.

One of the more striking examples comes from Marion
County, Oregon. Selected nonviolent offenders were
given the choice of serving a prison term or
returning to the community to participate in the 
Intensive Supervision Probation (ISP) program,
which imposed drug testing, mandatory community
service, and frequent visits with the probation
officer. About a third of the offenders given the
option between ISP or prison chose prison. When
Minnesota inmates and corrections staff were asked
to equate a variety of criminal sentences, they
rated 3 years of ISP as equivalent in punitiveness
to 1 year in prison (Petersilia and Deschenes,
1994).

What accounts for this seeming aberration? Why
should anyone prefer imprisonment to remaining in
the community--no matter what the conditions? Some
have suggested that prison has lost some of its
punitive sting and hence its ability to scare and
deter. For one, possessing a prison record is not
as stigmatizing as in the past because so many of
the offenders' peers (and family members) have also
"done time." A recent survey showed that 40 percent
of youths in State training schools have parents
who have been incarcerated. Further, about a
quarter of all U.S. black males will be
incarcerated during their lives, so the stigma
attached to having a prison record is not as great
as it was when it was relatively uncommon. And the
pains associated with prison--social isolation,
fear of victimization--seem less likely with repeat
offenders, who have learned how to do time. 

In fact, far from stigmatizing, prison evidently
confers status in some neighborhoods. Jerome
Skolnick of the University of California, Berkeley,
found that for drug dealers in California,
imprisonment confers a certain elevated "home boy"
status, especially for gang members for whom prison
and prison gangs can be an alternative site of
loyalty. And, according to the California Youth
Authority, inmates steal State-issued prison
clothing for the same reason. Wearing it when they
return to the community lets everyone know they
have done "hard time." 

The length of time an offender can be expected to
serve in prison has also decreased--latest
statistics show that the average U.S. prison term
for those released to parole is 17 months. But more
to the point, for less serious offenders the
expected time served can be much less. In
California, for example, more than half of all
offenders entering prison in 1995 were expected to
serve 6 months or less. Offenders on the street
seem to be aware of this, even more so with the
extensive media coverage such issues are receiving.

For convicted felons, freedom is preferable, of
course, to prison. But the type of program being
advocated here--combining heavy doses of
surveillance and treatment--does not represent
freedom. In fact, as suggested above, such
community-based programs may have more punitive
bite than prison. Consider a comparison between
Contra Costa (California) County's ISP for drug
offenders, which was discontinued in 1990 due to a
shortage of funds, with what drug offenders would
face if imprisoned:

ISP. Offenders are required to serve at least one
year on ISP. During ISP, offenders are supervised
by probation officers who are responsible for no
more than 40 adult offenders. In addition to twice
weekly face-to-face contacts, the ISP program
included a random drug testing hotline, Saturday
home visits, weekly Narcotics Anonymous meetings,
special assistance from local police to expedite
existing bench warrants, and a liaison with the
State Employment Development Department. To remain
on ISP, offenders had to be employed or
participating in relevant treatment or training,
perform community service, pay victim restitution
(if required by the court), and remain crime- and
drug-free.

or

Prison. A sentence of 12 months actually means that
an offender will serve about 6 months. During his
term, he is not required to work, nor will he be
required to participate in any training or
treatment, but may do so if he wishes. Once
released, he will probably be placed on routine
parole supervision, where he might see his officer
once a month.

These results are important to publicize,
particularly to
policymakers, who say they are imprisoning such a
large number of offenders because of the public's
desire to get tough on crime. But it is no longer
necessary to equate criminal punishment solely with
prison. The balance of sanctions between probation
and prison can be shifted, and at some level of
intensity and length, intermediate punishments can
be the more dreaded penalty.

Once the support and organizational capacity are
there, we need to target an offender group that
makes the most sense, given our current state of
knowledge regarding program effectiveness.
Targeting drug offenders makes the most sense for a
number of reasons. Drug offenders were not always
punished so frequently by imprisonment. In
California, for example, just 5 percent of
convicted drug offenders were sentenced to prison
in 1980, but by 1990 the number had increased to 20
percent. The large-scale imprisonment of drug
offenders has only recently taken place, and there
is some new evidence suggesting that the public
seems ready to shift its punishment strategies for
low-level drug offenders.  

A 1994 nationwide poll by Hart Research Associates
reported that Americans have come to understand
that drug abuse is not simply a failure of
willpower or a violation of criminal law. They now
see the problem as far more complex, involving not
only individual behavior but also fundamental
issues of poverty, opportunity, and personal
circumstances. Drug Strategies, a nonprofit policy
organization based in Washington, D.C., reported in
1995 that nearly half of all Americans have been
touched directly by the drug problem: 45 percent of
those surveyed in the 1994 Hart poll said that they
know someone who became addicted to a drug other
than alcohol. This personal knowledge is changing
attitudes about how to deal with the problem: 7 in
10 believed that their addicted acquaintance would
have been helped more by entering a supervised
treatment program than by being sentenced to
prison. 

It appears that the public now wants tougher
sentences for drug traffickers and more treatment
for addicts. What legislators have given them
instead are long sentences for everyone. Drug
Strategies, which analyzed the Hart survey,
concluded that "public opinion on drugs is more
pragmatic and less ideological than the current
political debate reflects. Voters know that
punitive approaches won't work." So, in that vein,
the public appears willing to accept something
other than prison for some drug offenders. 

The public's receptiveness to treatment for addicts
is important because those familiar with delivering
treatment say that is where treatment can make the
biggest impact. A recent report by the prestigious
Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends focusing on
probationers and parolees to curb drug use and
related crime. They noted that about one-fifth of
the population estimated to need treatment--and
two-fifths of those clearly needing it--are under
the supervision of the justice system as parolees
or probationers. And because the largest single
group of serious drug users in any locality comes
through the justice system every day, the IOM
concludes that the justice system is one of the
most important gateways to treatment delivery and
should be used more effectively.

Moreover, those under corrections supervision stay
longer in treatment, thereby increasing positive
treatment outcomes. The claim that individuals
forced into treatment by the courts will not be
successful has not been borne out by research. In
fact, just the opposite is true. The largest study
of drug treatment outcomes (TOPS) found that
justice system clients stayed in treatment longer
than clients with no justice system involvement. As
a result, they had higher than average success
rates. 

However, as noted above, quality treatment does not
come cheap. But in terms of crime and health costs
averted, it is an investment that pays for itself
immediately. Researchers in California recently
conducted an assessment of drug treatment programs
and identified those that were successful,
concluding that it can now be "documented that
treatment and recovery programs are a good
investment" (Gerstein et al., 1994). The
researchers studied a sample of 1,900 treatment
participants, followed them up for as long as 2
years of treatment, and studied participants from
the four major treatment modalities: therapeutic
communities, social model, outpatient drug-free,
and methadone maintenance. Gerstein et al. (1994:
33) concluded: 

Treatment was very cost-beneficial: for every
dollar spent on drug and alcohol treatment, the
State of California saved $7 in
reductions in crime and health care costs. The
study found that each day of treatment paid for
itself on the day treatment was received, primarily
through an avoidance of crime.

The level of criminal activity declined by two-
thirds from before treatment to after treatment.
The greater the length of time spent in treatment,
the greater the reduction in crime. Reported
criminal activity declined before and after
treatment as follows: mean number of times sold or
helped sell drugs (-75 percent), mean number of
times used weapon/physical force (-93 percent),
percent committing any illegal activity (-72
percent), and mean months involved in criminal
activity (-80 percent).

Regardless of treatment modality, reduction in
crime was
substantial and significant (although participants
in the social model recovery programs had the
biggest reduction). In the
California study, the most effective treatment
programs cost about $12,000 per year, per client.

In summary, there are several steps to achieving
greater crime control over probationers and
parolees. First, we must provide adequate financial
resources to deliver programs that have been shown
to work. Successful programs combine both treatment
and surveillance, and they are targeted to
appropriate offender subgroups. Current evidence
suggests that low-level drug offenders are prime
candidates for the intermediate sanction programs
considered here. We must then garner support,
convincing the public that the probation sanction
is punitive and convincing the
judiciary that offenders will be held accountable
for their behavior.  

Concluding Remarks

Current Federal efforts to curb crime seek simple, 
politically correct solutions where simple answers
do not exist. There are no silver bullet fixes to
the crime problem, nor are there any hopeful signs
that lead us to expect a spontaneous decline in the
problem in the absence of dramatic policy action.
If anything, the indicators point to increases in
violent youth crime, a trend that will likely
continue unless effective steps toward arresting it
are taken. 

This policy brief argues that current Federal
efforts are misguided and do not focus on
preventing the crimes of the next generation or de-
escalating the criminal careers of those on
probation and parole. Dr. Dean Ornish, the guru of
the low-fat road to cardiovascular health, shows a
cartoon at the opening of his lectures that has
application far beyond the topic of cardiovascular
disease. The slide shows a crew of doctors
frantically mopping up a floor that continues to be
flooded by an overflowing sink. The problem, of
course, is that no one has turned off the faucet.

Current crime policy is similarly focused. Short-
term strategies have held sway at the expense of
long-term prevention programs. We remain so
consumed by the overwhelming challenge of providing
cells for those imprisoned that we have little
energy (or money) to address the more fundamental
questions of how to prevent the ever-increasing
number of people who choose to enter a life of
crime or the continued criminal escalation of
probationers and parolees.  

Of course we must continue to imprison the violent.
It is a false dichotomy to argue between tough law
enforcement and community-based crime prevention
programs. The choice is not one or the other--it
must be both. We need to create enough prison space
to incarcerate the truly violent, but we also must
support programs to reduce the flood tide of
criminals that current conditions create. 

It will not be easy, so we had better start now.
 
References

Beck, Allen and Bernard Shipley, "Recidivism of
Prisoners Released in 1983," Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Washington, DC, 1989. 

Blumstein, Alfred, "Youth, Violence, Guns, and the
Illicit-Drug Industry," Heinz School of Public
Policy and Management, Carnegie-Mellon University,
Working Paper 94-29, 1994.

Clear, Todd and Anthony A. Braga, "Community
Corrections," in Crime, edited by James Q. Wilson
and Joan Petersilia, Institute for Contemporary
Studies, San Francisco, California, 1995.

Commission on the Future of the California Courts,
Justice in the Balance, 2020, Sacramento,
California, 1993.

Drug Strategies, Keeping Score, Washington, DC,
1995.

Gerstein, Dean, et al., Evaluating Recovery
Services: The
California Drug and Alcohol Treatment Assessment
(CALDATA), Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs,
State of California, 1994. 
Institute of Medicine, Committee for the Substance
Abuse Coverage Study (D.R. Gerstein and H.J.
Harwood, eds.), Treating Drug Problems, Vol. 1, "A
Study of the Evolution, Effectiveness, and
Financing of Public and Private Drug Treatment
Systems," National Academy Press, Washington, DC,
1990.

Langan, Patrick and Mark A. Cunniff, "Recidivism of
Felons on Probation, 1986-89," Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Washington, DC, 1992.

Langan, Patrick, "Between Prison and Probation:
Intermediate Sanctions," Science, Vol. 264, 1994.

Petersilia, Joan and Elizabeth Piper Deschenes,
"Perceptions on Punishment: Inmates and Staff Rank
the Severity of Prison versus Intermediate
Punishments," The Prison Journal, Vol. 74, 1993. 

Petersilia, Joan, "Crime and Punishment in
California: Full Cells, Empty Pockets, and
Questionable Benefits," California Policy Seminar,
Berkeley, California, 1993. 

Petersilia, Joan, Susan Turner, James Kahan, and
Joyce Peterson, Granting Felons Probation: Public
Risks and Alternatives, RAND, R-3186-NIJ, Santa
Monica, California, January 1995.

Schiraldi, Vincent, "Some Gift--For $1.4 Billion,
We Pay $31 Billion," Los Angeles Times, Opinion
Section, B13, March 15, 1995. 

Simon, Paul, in New Survey, "Wardens Call for
Smarter Sentencing, Alternatives to Incarceration,
and Prevention Programs," United States Senate
Press Release, Washington, DC, December 21, 1994. 

U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental
Relations, The Role of General Government Elected
Officials in Criminal Justice, Washington, DC,
1993.

------------------------------

Three-Strikes Legislation: Prevalence and
Definitions

Edith E. Flynn, Northeastern University, Chair
Timothy Flanagan, Sam Houston State University 
Peter Greenwood, Criminal Justice Program, RAND 
Barry Krisberg, National Council on Crime and
Delinquency

Three-Strikes and You're Out Legislation

Issues

Efforts to reduce violent crime and deal more
effectively with repeat offenders have led to a
wide range of legislative initiatives across the
Nation. Among the many sentence enhancement options
available for dealing with habitual offenders, the
three-strikes initiative has found much resonance
with the public and legislators alike. Proponents
view three-strikes sentencing legislation as the
solution for dealing with the persistent, serious,
and violent offender. Advocates promise that these
types of sentences will both reduce crime and,
ultimately, save taxpayers money. This is because
they believe that three-strikes would not only
decrease the cost of victimization through
incapacitation, but would also reduce the not
insubstantial costs of rearrest and reprocessing of
repeat offenders by the criminal justice system. 

A recent RAND assessment of California's three-
strikes legislation points to its potential for
reducing serious and violent crime, but at an
estimated cost of about $5.5 billion over the next
25 years. A second long-term effect on costs will
be the unprecedented growth of the elderly in
prisons, which will contribute to higher costs
because of their health needs (expected to be
double or triple that of inmates from the general
population).

Although more research is required on the
relationship between age and crime, it is clear
that categorical sentencing schemes, such as three-
strikes, countervail existing knowledge: 

o Statistically speaking, recidivism is known to
decline with increases in age. 

o Offending at an early age is highly predictive of
long criminal careers. 

o Attention should be focused on crime prevention
and early intervention among youths,  before they
become ensnared in criminal careers.

o Mandatory sentencing cannot take into account all
the circumstances affecting individual cases or
their various factual permutations. 

Short-term effects of this legislation include a
clogged court system causing rising court costs and
intolerable delays in civil cases; early release of
sentenced felons to make room for three-strikes
detainees; and increased discretionary power for
prosecutors.  

Policy recommendations

o Impact analysis. The Attorney General should
initiate a careful study of how the  Federal three-
strikes law is impacting the Federal courts and
corrections system. Beyond  that, further
expansions of the Federal statute should be
resisted until the analysis has been  completed.

o Informing the public. Since the current punitive
atmosphere permeates the public and  body politic,
the public needs to be informed of the true cost
and consequences of  categorical
sentencing schemes. As the Nation's first law
enforcement officer, the Attorney  General, along
with the National Institute of Justice, are in the
best position for getting the  correct
information out to the citizenry objectively and
fairly. 

o Criminal justice dialog. The Attorney General and
the National Institute of Justice should  consider
the development of appropriate mechanisms for
beginning a dialog with  prosecutors and victim
advocates who are fueling the public debate on
three-strikes laws.  Similar mechanisms are needed
to tap the abilities and experiences of judges for
developing  the kind of sentencing legislation that
optimizes discretion to allow consideration of 
individual differences among offenders, while
checking the abuses of the current mandatory 
systems.

n Research needs. The National Institute of Justice
should encourage and assist Federal and  State
legislative bureaus in the development of
appropriate research tools and studies to  estimate
the impact of mandatory sentencing bills, on both
costs and crime rates. Legislators  and the public
must understand the likely impact of such laws, not
only in terms of costs  and consequences for prison
crowding, but also in terms of related processes
and issues,  such as the negative effects on the
civil court system, and the diversion of scarce
resources  from education, health and welfare, the
infrastructure, and other vital public services. 

o Alternative sentencing. The National Institute of
Justice should encourage the development  of
alternative sentencing policies that may achieve
the same crime reduction benefits as  three-
strikes laws at considerably less cost and assist
in their evaluation, in terms of crime  reduction
and costs. Other "lifetime sanctions," such as
intensive supervision, community  service, etc.,
should be pursued. However, research should
accompany these programs to  document their effect
on public safety.

o Early intervention and prevention. Given the
likelihood that investment in youth crime 
prevention and early intervention programs may well
be more effective than three-strikes 
legislation, the Attorney General should direct the

allocation of Federal funding toward such programs.
The collateral benefits of "front-end"  investments
are likely to consist of improved scholastic and
economic performance of those  involved in the
programs.

o Regional conferences. The Attorney General should
consider convening a series of regional 
conferences to explore the findings of existing
research on the public safety impact and cost   
implications of various three-strikes laws. The
relative costs and benefits of early childhood 
crime prevention efforts, early intervention, and
alternative sentencing programs should also  be
examined. 

Three-Strikes Legislation: Prevalence and
Definitions 

Efforts to reduce violent crime and deal more
effectively with repeat offenders have led to a
wide range of legislative initiatives across the
Nation in the past few years. Among the many
sentence enhancement options available for dealing
with habitual offenders, the three-strikes
initiative, first passed in Washington State in
1993, has found much resonance among the general
public and legislators alike. By late 1994 no less
than 13 States had passed three-strikes sentencing
laws.1 They are California, Colorado, Connecticut,
Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New
Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and
Wisconsin. At least eight other States--Alaska,
Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
South Carolina, and Vermont--have similar
legislation pending.  

Proponents view three-strikes sentencing
legislation as the solution for dealing with the
persistent, serious, violent
offender--proverbially the three-time loser.
Depending on specific formulations, three-strikes
laws can be far reaching or narrowly focused. In
general, the majority of these provisions call for
enhanced penalties for offenders with one or more
prior felony convictions. These laws require that
offenders serve several years in prison in addition
to the penalty imposed for their current offense.
The remainder of habitual offender laws are geared
to respond to specific types of prior offenses,
such as crimes of violence, sex offenses, or crimes
perpetrated with guns. Under these types of
sentencing provisions, felons found guilty of a
third serious crime can be incarcerated for 20
years or more, while offenders convicted of a third
violent crime may draw life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole. 

With few exceptions, three-strikes laws are
mandatory, leaving judges no discretion for
deviating from the sentences prescribed by the
legislatures.2 Still, the most pronounced
characteristic of three-strikes legislation is the
extraordinary length of prison terms being imposed.
For example, the laws of Georgia, Indiana,
Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee, Washington, and
Wisconsin mandate life without the possibility of
parole, while offenders serving life sentences in
California and North Carolina become eligible for
parole only after serving 25 years, in New Mexico
after 30 years, and in Colorado after 40 years.3 
 
Examples of Three-Strikes and Related Legislation

Legislation passed in Washington and California are
prototypical examples of wide-ranging three-strikes
laws. For example, under the provisions of
Washington's Initiative Measure 593, titled the 
"Persistent Offender Accountability Act," any
person meeting the definition of "persistent
offender" must be sentenced to a term of life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole.4
Persistent offenders are defined as persons who
have been convicted of a felony considered to be a
"most serious offense" in addition to having two
prior separate felony convictions. "Most serious
offenses" include a wide variety of offenses
ranging from murder, assaults, and robbery to
burglary, indecent liberties, and
promoting prostitution.5 

California's three-strikes legislation was passed
in March l994 and subsequently ratified by voters
in the form of a referendum in the fall of that
year. This means that any changes in the law would
require a two-thirds vote in the legislature. It
surpasses any other legislation on the books in
terms of reach and punitiveness. Under its
provisions, the first two serious felonies are
counted as two strikes. The broad sweep of the law
is activated with the commission of "any subsequent
felony" or third strike. At this point, a mandatory
life sentence is imposed. Three-strikes
offenders must spend a minimum of 25 years in
prison. In addition, under the new law, sentences
are doubled for the second strike, and prisoners
must serve their penalty in prison rather than
under community supervision or at the local jail.
Additionally, "good time" earned in prison is
reduced from the previous 50 percent to 20 percent
of one's "enhanced" prison term.6

Nevada's pending "super habitual offender"
legislation narrows the focus somewhat by
concentrating on repeat offenders who commit
serious felony crimes that are either violent or
sex-related.7 It proposes a super habitual statute
that would be triggered by a third violent or sex-
related felony and draw a life sentence with or
without parole.

Slightly more measured, Vermont's proposed
legislation for violent career criminals and
habitual criminals focuses on repetitive, violent
crime. It sets a mandatory minimum of not less than
15 years for a conviction for a third felony crime
of violence, if preceded by two previous violent
felony convictions.8 But judges could still
sentence to a maximum term of imprisonment up to
and including life. In addition, persons sentenced
under the provisions of this legislation would not
be eligible for probation, early release, furlough,
or parole release until after the minimum prison
term has been served.

Additional permutations of three-strikes laws exist
in Michigan, where prosecutors have the option of
seeking harsher sentences based on prior felony
convictions, and in Minnesota, where judges can no
longer deviate from existing sentencing guidelines
when offenders have been convicted of a third
violent crime.

The U.S. Government has entered the three-strikes
arena with the passage of the Violent Crime Control
and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, better known as
the Federal Anti-Crime Act. The legislation
provides financial incentives to States in return
for increasing their penalties for violent
offenders. In essence, the Truth-in-Sentencing
Incentive Grants promise Federal moneys based on a
formula calculated on the number of violent crimes
in each State. However, before receiving the
grants, States must change their penal codes so
that offenders with a second violent crime would
have to serve a minimum of 85 percent of their
prison sentence. States would also have to increase
the percentage of all violent offenders sentenced
to prison, eliminate parole for two-strike violent
offenders, and increase the time served by such
prisoners.  
Effects of Three-Strikes Legislation

The idea of incarcerating repeat offenders for very
long prison terms, including life without parole,
has certainly caught fire in the public
imagination. 

Advocates promise that these types of sentence will
not only reduce crime but will ultimately save
taxpayers money. This is because they believe that
three- strikes would not only reduce the cost of
victimization through incapacitation but would also
reduce the substantial costs of rearrest and
reprocessing repeat offenders by the criminal
justice system. 

The task force has analyzed the early assessments
of the effects of three-strikes and related
legislation and questions the validity of the
assumptions on which it is based. 

RAND's Analysis of California's Three-Strikes Law

The first serious attempt to estimate the costs and
benefits of California's three-strikes law was
recently published by RAND.9 Researchers
constructed an analytic model for estimating crime
rates and costs of the ways in which populations of
offenders on the street and in prison would change
under the provisions of the new three-strikes law.
They also tested four alternative sentencing
schemes: (1) a two-strikes-only option; (2) a
paradigm focusing on violent felons only; (3) a
design treating violent offenders more harshly,
while treating minor offenders more leniently; and
(4) a guaranteed-full-term scheme under which
three-strikes provisos are abandoned, and offenders
convicted of serious or violent felonies (including
those without any prior strikes) must serve their
full sentences without the benefit of "good-time"
deductions.

The results of RAND's assessment shed considerable
light on the sentencing debate. They also provide
some interesting and not entirely unexpected
findings. For example, there are definite trade-
offs among the various schemes. In essence, the
more focused sentencing alternatives are less
costly than the three-strikes option provided by
the current law. But the alternatives are also less
effective for reducing crime. 

Of the four alternative sentencing schemes tested,
the option that reserves extended sentences
exclusively for violent felons turns out to be the
best possible option in terms of costs and
benefits. This is because it delivers two-thirds of
the crime reduction of three strikes at half the
cost. As it is written, California's three-strikes
legislation has the capacity over the next 25 years
to reduce the annual number of serious crimes to 28
percent below the number of offenses that would
have been committed under the previous law.10 While
this is unquestionably a significant crime
reduction, it comes unfortunately with an increase
in cost to taxpayers of about $5.5 billion a year
over the same time period. The two-strikes option
and the scheme that punishes serious offenders more
severely while treating minor offenders more
leniently, fall between these two options in terms
of cost and potential crime reductions. 

One of the more interesting RAND findings involves
the guaranteed-full-term sentencing scheme. It
matches the current three-strikes law in crime
reduction, and it does so at less cost. The model
also has some added advantages. Because it
incapacitates offenders early in their criminal
careers by giving short prison terms to first-time
serious felons, while three-strikes imposes long
sentences to a few at the end of their careers, its
incapacitating effects correspond with the well-
known relation between age and crime.
Criminologically speaking, it makes little sense to
invest scarce resources by incarcerating offenders
whose prime offending years are behind them. 

California's Legislative Analyst's Office
Assessment of the State's Three-Strikes Law: A
Lesson About Unintended Consequences 

The most recent assessment of California's three-
strikes law comes from the State's Legislative
Analyst's Office (LAO).11 In essence, it identifies
a number of problems associated with the three-
strikes legislation and lists a series of
unintended consequences. First, rather than
concentrate the full weight of the law on the
serious, violent offender, a majority (about 70
percent) of defendants charged under three-strikes
are nonviolent, standing accused of petty theft and
drug possession. 

Second, the law has seriously impacted plea
bargaining rates. Under the old law, more than 90
percent of all felony cases were concluded through
plea bargains. Under three-strikes, this number has
dwindled to 14 percent of two-strikes cases, and a
mere 6 percent of three-strikes cases. It appears
that private defense attorneys and public
prosecutors advise their clients that they have
little to lose by refusing to plea bargain. Not
surprisingly, the State is experiencing large
increases in jury trials. For example, Los Angeles
County expects its jury trials to more than double.
More than 5,000 such trials are expected in the
county this year alone. This is bad news for anyone
hoping to get a civil case heard in California
courts. Criminal cases take precedence under the
speedy-trial rules, and the tremendous increase in
jury trials has consumed all resources. 

Third, three-strikes has adversely affected jails
in several ways. LAO found that counties tend to
set bail for two-strikes defendants at twice the
usual rate, while three-strikes defendants may be
refused bail altogether. As a result, already
overcrowded jails are crowded further. The cost of
jail supervision is higher for this offender
population because it is considered to be a higher
security risk. Perhaps worst of all, the
incarceration of two- and three-strikes detainees
is forcing jails to release other inmates early.
For example, the time served by inmates in the Los
Angeles County jail system has dropped from about
two-thirds of their sentence to less than 50
percent, surely an unintended consequence of the
new three-strikes law.

Fourth, as has been amply documented in other
States with inflexible sentencing laws,
prosecutors, judges, juries, and even crime victims
find ways to circumvent the intent of the three-
strikes legislation in California. This is because
they perceive injustice in certain cases and think
that the punishment simply does not fit the crime.
In such instances, charges will be changed to
lesser offenses, and judges can convert prior
felony offenses to misdemeanors or even refuse to
consider the existence of prior felony records. In
that sense, discretion in criminal justice is
analogous to the third law of thermodynamics. Like
energy, it cannot be eliminated, only displaced. 

Fifth, even though California's prison population
is growing by 300 to 400 inmates a week, the full
impact of three-strikes has yet to be felt by the
State prison system. This is because too few cases
have reached the point of conviction and sentencing
under the new law. Nonetheless, LAO findings
confirm RAND's inmate population and cost
projections. By 1999, the California Department of
Corrections expects its prison population to have
increased by roughly 70 percent to a total of
211,000. Given that growth rate, the State will
have to build at least another 15 institutions at
an estimated cost of several billion dollars. 

Sixth, California's crime rates have dropped 6.7
percent during the first half of 1994. That trend
appears to be holding. However, whether or not that
means three-strikes is working is less clear. This
is because the crime rates had begun to decline
prior to the passage of this legislation and may be
largely independent of it.  Nevada's Analysis of
the Super Habitual Offender Statute: The High Cost
of Three-Strikes to Small Systems

It will be recalled that Nevada is contemplating
the passing of a super habitual offender law that
targets offenders convicted of a third violent or
sex-related felony. At the legislature's request,
Nevada's Legislative Counsel Bureau conducted a
limited analysis of the fiscal impact of this
legislation based on actual prisoner intake
information derived from its prison system.12
Dealing with a much smaller inmate population than
California, the Bureau identified only seven
inmates as potential candidates for the super
habitual offender law. Three of the seven were
already serving more severe sentences than those
contemplated under the new law (two are on death
row and one is serving two consecutive life
sentences). Using 37 years as a life term (based on
Nevada's experience), the Bureau determined that
the 4 remaining inmates would have to "collectively
serve an additional 81 years beyond their current
sentences" had the new three-strikes legislation
been in effect. The Bureau then multiplied the
fiscal year 1993 cost of keeping one inmate
($14,188) by 81. This yields a total of $1,149,228
in additional costs to the system for four inmates,
directly
attributable to three-strikes legislation. The
Bureau purposefully did not include the added costs
of inflation, increases in the crime rate, or
rising capital, administrative, and operations
costs in its calculations. Had they done so, the
total cost would have been significantly higher. 

Texas' Assessment of Federal Truth-in-Sentencing
Grants

In January 1995, the Criminal Justice Policy
Council of Texas assessed the potential impact of
the recent Federal anti-crime initiatives.13 Its
report concludes that "if Texas abolishes parole
for all violent offenders without adopting
sentencing guidelines and requires these offenders
to serve 85 percent of their sentence, and present
sentencing patterns remain the same," the State
would need about 10,400 additional prison beds
between 1996 and 2000 to accommodate the effects of
this policy. Further, even if Texas were to receive
all possible Federal moneys allocated to the State
under the grant provisions, the funding would not
cover the costs of constructing the new prison
cells, nor would there be any Federal resources for
operational costs. Looking at the long-term
impact of this Federal initiative, the Council
estimated that it would generate the need for an
additional 50,400 prison beds between 2000 and
2046.14

Short-Term Effects of Three-Strikes Legislation on
the Criminal Justice System 

Based on what is known about the experiences with
three-strikes so far, it is clear that this kind of
legislation has begun to clog the court system to
the choking point. This is due to greatly reduced
plea bargaining rates engendered by this type of
law. As more and more defendants opt for trials,
court capacities will diminish and court costs will
rise. To free crowded court calendars, civil cases
will be pushed back beyond the point of tolerance
of citizens seeking justice. The dramatic changes
in plea bargaining are no surprise. Various
mandatory sentences have long been on the books
across the Nation. For example, New York's tough
drug control laws or Massachusetts' gun control
legislation prescribe mandatory incarceration of
violators. Evaluations of the impact of this type
of legislation have shown invariably that it tends
to be subverted by practitioners whenever they
perceive that injustice would result: "Prosecutors
refuse to press for
conviction, juries refuse to convict, and judges
refuse to sentence people under these provisions.
Hundreds of imaginative ways are found at every
level of the criminal justice system (including the
police) to circumvent the intent of such laws."15 

Jails, already overcrowded, are being stretched
beyond capacity. To make room for three-strikes
detainees whose bail is denied for security
reasons, more and more sentenced prisoners will
have to be released after serving only fractions of
their jail terms. And if more dangerous felons are
released to make room for the three-strikes
detainees, the outcome is certainly less justice,
not more. 
For those who advocate three-strikes to improve
equity in criminal justice, there is little
evidence to support their hopes. Studies point to
continued racial disparity under enhanced
sentencing structures. For example, assessments of
related sentencing (such as mandatory prison terms)
indicate that legislative efforts to curtail
judicial discretion tend to be checkmated by
discretion practiced in the prosecutor's office. At
that level it is much less open to public scrutiny,
where a variety of factors, mostly unrelated to
public safety, come into play. Among those factors
affecting case processing and outcome are race,
pretrial release as opposed to pretrial detention,
and the quality and type of defense counsel.16 As
long as prosecutors retain practical control over
plea agreements, discrection will be exercised and
legislative intent thwarted. 

Delayed Effects of Three-Strikes Legislation on
Prisons

One of the more insidious effects of three-strikes
and related legislation is that the burden of its
impact will increase only gradually. In fact, the
full weight of these sentence enhancers will not be
felt for many years. This delayed impact is because
most serious, violent offenders already pull
comparatively long sentences while the impact of
three-strikes will simply lengthen the time inmates
must serve. In the Nevada example, the super
sentence would come into effect after 12 years, the
time inmates must currently serve. Thus the full
fiscal impact of this
legislation will not be felt until well into the
next century (2033).17 In South Carolina, the
Office of State Budget estimates that the currently
contemplated three-strikes law would cost the State
$1 billion over the next 14 years with most of the
money ($664 million) going toward prison
construction. Here too, inmates and costs could
grow incrementally from an additional 157 inmates
and $1.9 million in 1996, to 3,273 inmates and
$41.1 million in 1999, to a staggering 20,005 new
inmates and an additional $251.5 million in 2010.18
A second, equally slow-growing, long-term effect of
three-strikes legislation is the gradual
accumulation of  elderly inmates in the Nation's
prison systems. Even though the percentage of
elderly arrested (compared with other segments of
the population) is declining, the actual number of
elderly who run afoul of the law and are
subsequently arrested is increasing in the Nation.
Recent counts of older inmates reflect substantial
increases in both their number and their percentage
in the total population. In fact, prisoners aged 55
years and above more than doubled from 1981 to
1991.19 

While differences in definitions and incarceration
practices make comparisons between States
difficult, record numbers of inmates are serving
life sentences. In 1990, 11,227 inmates were
serving natural life sentences in 30 prison
systems.20 This figure has increased substantially
since that time. As of 1994, 17,281 inmates were
serving natural life sentences in 36 systems. This
represents a 46-percent increase in that offender
population.21 The number of inmates serving 20
years or more has increased from 96,921 in 45
systems in 1990 to 141,026 in 49 systems in 1994,
reflecting a 49-percent increase. Such data
virtually guarantee that a sizable proportion of
any given prisoner population will be growing old
and gray in the Nation's State and Federal prison
systems.22

The unprecedented increase of the elderly in
prisons will contribute significantly to the rapid
acceleration of the costs of imprisonment because
the incidence of health problems is higher among
elderly inmates compared with the health needs of
elderly in the general population. In general,
older inmates tend to have more chronic health
problems requiring specialized, continuous health
care, including pharmacy services, physical
therapy, dietary provisions, skilled nursing care,
and related services. About one-third of older
offenders are known to experience one or more
chronic health problems.23 These illnesses run the
gamut from vision and hearing loss,
gastrointestinal disorders, and arthritis to
respiratory and cardiovascular problems, cancer,
AIDS,
tuberculosis, and Alzheimer's disease. The best
available estimates for the cost of health care for
this elderly inmate population range from double to
triple the cost of incarcerating inmates in the
general population. This means that prisons must
spend on average between $40,000 and $60,000
annually for each seriously chronically ill, older
inmate. Because most of them do not
represent any serious threat to public safety, the
cost of their incarceration adds literally millions
of dollars in expenditures with little to show for
the investment.

Summary Findings

In summation, the most important consequences of
three-strikes, two-strikes, truth-in-sentencing,
and related schemes are seen in the fact that each
subsequent year will add to the already
increasing prison population wherever they are
implemented. There will also be huge increases in
the cost of incarceration, modified only by
fluctuations in the crime rate and the number of
offenders qualifying for the enhanced sentences.
However, the full fiscal impact of this
legislation, akin to Pandora's box, will not unfold
until well into the first quarter of the next
century, and a prolific source of fiscal troubles
it will bring indeed.

The cornerstone of three-strikes and related
legislation rests on the twin promises of crime and
cost reduction. The previously discussed RAND
assessment of California's penal law does point to
its potential for reducing serious and violent
crime, but at a stunning cost. And while it is too
early to attribute with any confidence California's
declining crime rate to the new law, there is an
unquestionable acceleration in the growth of
prisoners and costs, not only in this State but in
any other jurisdiction with mandatory sentence
enhancement schemes.

The potential of three-strikes and related laws for
crime reduction can also be productively assessed
by looking at the plethora of criminological
research on the relationship between age and crime.
In general, crime rates peak during the teenage
years. It is axiomatic that crime is a young man's
game because most serious crimes are committed by
young males between the ages of 14 and 24. After
those active years, there is first a rapid decline
in criminal activities followed by a gradually
diminishing crime rate. The sharp drop in crime
rates is seen in the fact that a majority (about 67
percent) of those arrested for violent crime are
under 30 years old. However, the true relationship
between age and crime does not quite trace the
widely documented age-crime curve because
calculations of the average lengths of criminal
careers for those arrested for Index crimes show
them to be 5.6 years, with residual career lengths
peaking between the ages of 30 and 40.24 These two
findings are significant for penal policy
development. This is because the greatest potential
for incapacitation through incarceration may well
be for offenders between the ages of 30 and 40, and
not, as is often suggested, for those age 30 and
under.25

Although more research is required on the
relationship between age and crime and the
complexities of criminal careers (such as residual
career length and incidence), it is clear that
categorical sentencing schemes, such as three-
strikes and other mandatory options, countervail
existing knowledge as follows: 

o First, statistically speaking, recidivism is
known to decline with increase in age. Hence, 
long-term incarceration of offenders who will grow
old in prison invests scarce resources where they
will do the least good if the goal is to reduce
recidivism. 

o Second, since offending at an early age is highly
predictive of long criminal careers, the  strongest
message of the age-crime curve for policy
development lies in focusing attention  on crime
prevention. Among the firmly established facts in
criminological research is that  the younger a teen
is when first arrested for any criminal behavior,
the more likely the  youth is to continue in that
activity. Therefore, legislatures interested in
crime reduction  could reap the greatest returns
for public dollars by investing them at the front
end of the  system. The focus should be on the
development of a wide range of crime prevention and

early intervention programs for youngsters before
they become ensnared in criminal careers.  Many of
these program activities should be outside the
criminal justice system and should  concentrate on
child development, family, and schools. 

o Third, mandatory (and related) sentencing schemes
appear to be the antithesis of principles  of
individualization and fairness in criminal justice.
This is because sentencing legislation  cannot
possibly take into account all of the circumstances
affecting individual cases or the  many factual
permutations that exist among various cases.
Advocates of sentencing reform  believed it would
improve fairness in criminal justice through
uniformity, openness, and the  removal of judicial
discretion, but experience thus far indicates that
these reforms are  neither fair nor effective.   

Conclusion and Recommendations

The preceding analysis of the Nation's experience
with three-strikes and related penal laws points to
the vast differences that exist between the
manifest or intended consequences of the
legislation and the latent or unintended effects it
engenders. In other words, the discrepancies
between what is "mandated" or  "guaranteed" by the
language of these laws and the problems encountered
on implementation are characteristic of all
significant criminal justice legislation, past,
present, and future. These discrepancies occur
because the criminal justice system is in reality a
very complex organism with no clearly defined head,

designed to reconcile the often competing demands
among its many constituent parts, of which public
safety is but one. Other parts include equity,
procedural fairness, efficiency, and consistency.
Similar to previous experiences with major
legislation in the history of this Nation, three-
strikes demonstrates the extreme difficulty in
predicting just how the combined reactions of
prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, jurors,
defendants, parole boards, and corrections
officials will affect the outcome when such
legislation is promulgated. Consequently, the only
way to safeguard against unintended negative
consequences is to monitor the
implementation of new laws very closely and make
whatever changes are required to achieve the
desired goals. 

In light of the preceding analysis, the task force
has developed the following recommendations: 

o The Attorney General should initiate a careful
study of the impact of Federal three-strikes  law
on Federal courts and corrections systems. Beyond
that, further expansion of the  Federal statute
should be resisted until the analysis has been
completed. 

o Since the current punitive atmosphere permeates
the public and body politic, the public  needs to
be informed of the true cost and consequences of 
categorical sentencing schemes. The Attorney 
General, as the Nation's first law enforcement
officer, along with the National Institute of
Justice, are in the best position for disseminating

correct information to the public objectively and
fairly. 

o The Attorney General and the National Institute
of Justice should consider the development  of
appropriate mechanisms for beginning a dialog with
prosecutors and victim advocates  who   are
presently fueling the public debate on three-
strikes laws. Similar  mechanisms are needed to
enlist the abilities and experiences of judges for
developing the  kind of sentencing legislation that
optimizes discretion to allow consideration of
individual  differences among offenders while
checking the abuses of the current mandatory
systems. 

o The National Institute of Justice should
encourage and assist Federal and State legislative 
bureaus in the development of appropriate research
tools and studies to estimate the impact  of
mandatory sentencing bills on both costs and crime
rates. At present, analytic techniques  and data
bases exist for making rough estimates of the
impact of any mandatory sentencing  law. Both
techniques and data bases require refinement.
Legislators and the public must  understand the
likely impact of such laws, not only in terms of
costs and consequences for  prison crowding, but
also in terms of related processes and issues.
Among these are the  negative effects on the civil
court system, and, because public moneys are
limited, the  diversion of scarce resources from
education, health, welfare, the infrastructure, and
other  vital public services. 

o Because alternative sentencing policies exist
that may well achieve the same crime reduction 
benefits as three-strikes laws at considerably less
cost, the National Institute of Justice  should
encourage their development and assist in their
evaluation in terms of crime  reduction and costs.
Other life-time sanctions such as intensive
supervision and community  service should be
pursued. However, research should accompany these
programs to  document their effect on public
safety.

o Given the likelihood that investment in youth
crime prevention and early intervention  programs
may well be more effective than three-strikes
legislation, the Attorney General  should direct
the allocation of federal funding toward such
programs. The collateral benefits  of front-end
investments are likely to consist of improved
scholastic and economic  performance of those
involved in the programs.

o The Attorney General should consider convening a
series of regional conferences to explore  the
findings of existing research on the impact on
public safety and cost implications of  various
three-strikes laws. The relative costs and benefits
of early childhood crime  prevention efforts and
early intervention and alternative sentencing
programs should also be  examined.

Notes

1. Karpelowitz, A. 1994. "Three Strikes" Sentencing
Legislation Update. Denver, CO: National Conference
of State Legislatures. 

2. Connecticut, Kansas, and Maryland preserve some
judicial discretion in their "three strikes"
legislation.

3. Karpelowitz, supra note 1.

4. RCW 9.94A.120 and 9.94A.030 (reenacted and
amended, January 1993). 

5. The Washington State Initiative 593 defines
"most serious offenses" as any Class A felony,
serious assaults, child
molestation, controlled substance homicide,
extortion first degree, incest with a child,
indecent liberties, kidnapping, leading organized
crime, manslaughter, promotion of prostitution,
rape, robbery second degree, sexual exploitation,
vehicular assault with DUI, any Class B felony with
sexual motivation, and any felony with a deadly
weapon finding.

6. Greenwood, P.W., C.P. Rydell, A.F. Abrahamse,
J.P. Caulkins, J. Chiesa, K.E. Model, and S.P.
Klein. (1994). Three Strikes and You're Out.
Estimated Benefits and Costs of California's New
Mandatory Sentencing Law. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

7. "Criminal Justice System in Nevada." 1994.
Legislative Counsel Bureau, Bulletin No.
95-6:13-19. Carson City, NV.

8. Communication from Senator Vincent Illuzzi,
Senate Institutions Committee, Vermont Legislative
Council, Montpelier, VT, 2-27-95. 

9. Greenwood, supra note 6. This section of the
discussion is based on the principal findings in
the RAND research report.

10. Greenwood, supra note 6, at 18.

11. The "Three Strikes and You're Out" Law--A
Preliminary
Assessment. 1995. Sacramento, CA: Legislative
Analyst's Office. This segment of the report is
based on the findings of this assessment. 

12. Legislative Counsel Bureau, supra note 7, at 
15-19. The discussion of this section is based on
the findings of the Bureau. 

13. Fabelo, T. 1995. Biennial Report to the
Governor and the 74th Texas Legislature: The Big
Picture Issues in Criminal Justice, Austin,
TX:16-18.

14. Fabelo, supra note 13 at 17.

15. Flynn, E.E. May 1976. "Turning Judges into
Robots." The Forensic Quarterly, V50 N2:143-149.

16. Meierhoeffer, B.S. 1992. "The General Effect of
Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms," Washington, DC:
Federal Judicial Center; and V. Schiraldi, with M.
Godfrey. 1994. "Racial Disparities in the Charging
of Los Angeles County's Third `Strike' Cases."
1994. San Francisco, CA: Center on Juvenile and
Criminal Justice.

17. Legislative Counsel Bureau, supra note 7, at
19.

18. Corrections ALERT, V l, N23, March 6, 1995.

19. American Correctional Association. 1992.
Directory: Juvenile and adult correctional
departments, institutions, agencies and paroling
authorities. Laurel, MD: American Correctional
Association; and E.E. Flynn. 1992. "The Graying of
America's Prison Population." The Prison Journal,
V72, N1&2:77-98. 

20. Camp, M., and Camp, C.G. 1991. The corrections
yearbook. South Salem, NY: Criminal Justice
Institute.

21. Flynn, E.E. 1995. Managing Elderly Offenders.
Report to the National Institute of Justice, 93-IJ-
CX-0015.

22. Austin, J. (1994). Three strikes and you're
out: The likely consequences on the courts,
prisons, and crime in California and Washington
State. San Francisco, CA: National Council on Crime
and Delinquency; and M. Camp, and C.G. Camp. 1993.
The corrections yearbook. South Salem, NY: Criminal
Justice Institute; and Tonry, M. 1994. "Drug
policies increasing racial disparities in U.S.
prisons." Overcrowded Times, V5, l:11-14.

23. Anno, B.J. 1990. "The cost of correctional
health care: Results of a national survey." Journal
of Prison and Jail Health, V9 N2:105-134.

24. Blumstein, A., J. Cohen, and P. Hsieh. 1982.
The Duration of Adult Criminal Careers. Final
Report to the National Institute of Justice.
Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. For
an excellent discussion of the relationship between
age and crime see D.P. Farrington. 1986. "Age and
Crime," in Crime and Justice Review of Research, M.
Tonry and N. Morris, eds., Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, l89-250.

25. Farrington, supra note 18 at 223.

American Crime Problems From a Global Perspective

Gerhard O.W. Mueller, Rutgers University, Chair
Paul C. Friday, University of North Carolina-
Charlotte
Robert McCormack, Trenton State College
Graeme Newman, SUNY-Albany
Richard H. Ward, The University of Illinois at
Chicago

American Crime Problems From a Global Perspective

Issues

Transnational crime (i.e., crime violating the laws
of several international sovereignties or impacting
another sovereignty) has grown incrementally over
the past two decades, at a rate roughly
corresponding to the increase shown in
international trade import-export figures and
developments in transportation and communications.
Several events demonstrate the stark reality of
transnational crimes: the destruction by a
terrorist bomb of Pan American Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988; the 1993 terrorist
bombing of the World Trade Center; the more recent
conspiracy in New York City to destroy all Hudson
River crossings and both FBI and United Nations
headquarters; and the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI) scam, with an estimated cost
to U.S. taxpayers of between $200 billion and $1.4
trillion by the year 2021.

In each of these cases, U.S. law enforcement
authorities responded vigorously, but with limited
overall success. Our system has been developed to
deal with criminality at the city/county level and,
in some cases, at the national level. With respect
to global crime, however, we lack readiness--in
terms of education, research sponsorship,
interagency cooperation (between the Departments of
Justice and State), and a full commitment to a
centralized and coordinated international effort. 

Crime is not a strictly local, or even national,
problem; although its impact is felt at the local
level, much crime is internationally conditioned
and coordinated. For instance, the connection
between street crime and the importation and
dissemination of drugs is well established.
Similarly, an increase in fraud crimes is
commensurate with growth in the operational reach
of commercial transactions. Profits from the
international drug trade, "laundered" overseas and
reinvested in American real estate, commercial, or
entertainment enterprises,  significantly affect
U.S. citizens, who must pick up the burden for
uncollected taxes on these transactions.

In addition, the impact of ethnic gang criminality
on our "local" crime scene is readily apparent,
e.g., the wholesale trade in cocaine, controlled by
illegal immigrants from Colombia; the importation
of Chinese slave labor into the U.S. and
exploitation of Chinese-American businesses by
Chinese gangs (triad-based); trade in arms and
drugs by Jamaican gangs; burglaries by Albanian
gangs; and involvement in the fuel distribution
market and the international trade of weapons and
nuclear materials by Russian gangs. These new
ethnic gangs maintain intra-ethnic contacts, as
well as relations with their countries of origin,
and local law enforcement professionals are
powerless to stop or control them.  

Policy recommendations

o U.N. Convention. Section 32098 of the 1994 Crime
Act (dealing with the development of  a United
Nations Convention on Organized Crime) should be
retained and further implemented. 

o Overseas deployment. The achievements of the
Federal Government in dealing with the  complex
problems of transnational crime, including
deployment of U.S. law enforcement  personnel in
overseas stations, should be publicly highlighted
and strengthened. 

o Training. Strategies to deal with transnational
crime should require that schools of criminal 
justice provide more focused training in areas such
as geography, geopolitics, foreign  criminal
justice systems, comparative criminological
methods, and global approaches to  crime control. 

o Data bases and strategies. The capacity of the
Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National
Institute of Justice to develop international data
bases and strategies for dealing with transnational
crime, in collaboration with the U.N. Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch and groups
of American scholars, should be strengthened. 

o Interagency cooperation. The Departments of
Justice and State should strengthen their 
cooperative efforts to deal with organized crime.

o Counter-terrorism. The Omnibus Counter-Terrorism
Act of 1995 deserves vigorous  implementation and
constant evaluation/monitoring of its impact. 

o Global perspective. Every effort should be made
to move the crime control debate out of  the
current gridlock of national versus local
approaches; most local crime is the result of
worldwide developments and, thus, falls under  the
foreign policy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

o Local perspective. The effort to deal with
"local" crime as the product of worldwide events 
should focus on criminality pertaining to drugs,
fraud, and ethnic gangs--with constant  vigilance
toward other existing and emerging forms of
internationally conditioned  criminality.

o Ethnic recruitment. To deal with ethnic gang
criminality, a vigorous recruitment drive  should
be initiated to enlist
candidates from "new" ethnic minorities who can
understand or  infiltrate such gangs in affected
communities; this recruitment could be part of the 
community policing program initiative to deploy
100,000 new police officers, or it could be  part
of the block grant program.

American Crime Problems From a Global Perspective

[I]nternational criminal activity has increased 
dramatically over the past decade and has 
been facilitated by modern developments in 
transportation and communications, relaxed 
travel restrictions, and the greatly increased 
volume of international trade....1 

The American scholarly community in criminology and
criminal justice fully supports this congressional
finding. It rests solidly on research conducted in
this country and abroad. The finding has two major
implications. First, it requires national
leadership in a global approach to deal with
transnational crime. Second, it requires us to
rethink "local crime" as no longer being truly
locally conditioned but, rather, as being the
product of events worldwide. These two issues are
taken up in order.

National Leadership in a Global Approach To Deal
With Transnational Crime

Transnational crime (crime violating the laws of
several international sovereignties or crime with
impact in another sovereignty) has grown
incrementally over the past two decades, roughly
corresponding with the increase in international
trade (import-export figures), transportation, and
communications. Its reality was brought home
starkly with several recent events, of which three
may serve to demonstrate the point:

o The destruction by a terrorist bomb of Pan Am
Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, with  the loss
of 270 (mostly American) lives, in 1988.

o The terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center
(1993) and the more recent conspiracy to  destroy
all New York City Hudson River crossings, the New
York Federal Bureau of  Investigation
headquarters, and the United Nations headquarters. 

o The Bank of Credit and Commerce International
(BCCI) scam that, it is estimated, will cost  U.S.
taxpayers between $200 billion and $1.4 trillion by
the year 2021. 

In all these cases, U.S. law enforcement
authorities have responded vigorously, yet with
limited success. Our system has been perfected to
deal with criminality at the city and county
levels, and with regard to some forms of
criminality, at the national level. We are not yet
quite ready to deal with global criminality. This
lack of readiness can be perceived as follows: 

o At the educational level, our schools of criminal
justice have ignored globalization until the  early
1990's. Only since then have the textbooks of the
field provided global coverage of  crime and crime
prevention.

o At the research level, interest in the global
approach has been building up only recently.  While
a substantial body of research and information
(especially world crime and justice  statistics) is
now in existence, an achievement in which the
Bureau of Justice Statistics has  played a vital
role, there are few sponsors for badly needed
research. 

o At the operational level, the Administration
deserves praise for having perfected a network  of
U.S. criminal justice personnel serving on overseas
assignments, in collaboration with the  enforcement
agencies of other governments. (In fact, the
Administration has not taken  enough credit for
building up this international outreach. An
appropriate information  exercise could provide
considerable assurance to the American public.) 

o At the interagency level (especially between the
U.S. Departments of Justice and State),  American
researchers have the uneasy feeling that a proper
modus operandi has not yet  been achieved.

o At the international level, American researchers
are well aware of the difficulties of  persuading a
relatively isolationist U.S. Senate that full
cooperation with international  agencies
(especially the United Nations Crime Prevention and
Criminal Justice Branch and  its institutes, with
United Nations
peacekeeping missions and participation in regional

operations) is in the best national interest of the
United States (or the global community of  which
developments have made us an integral part). But
here, too, the Administration  deserves credit for
actions that have not been brought to the attention
of the public in an  appropriate manner. We are
referring here particularly to Section 320908 of
the 1994 Crime  Bill:

SEC. 320908. SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING THE ROLE
OF THE UNITED NATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZED
CRIME CONTROL.

It is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) the United States should encourage the
development of a United Nations Convention on  
Organized Crime; and

(2) the United Nations should--

 (A)provide significant additional resources to the
Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal  
Justice;

 (B)consider an expansion of the Commission's role
and authority; and  

(C)seek a cohesive approach to the international
organized crime problem. 

The Administration deserves credit as well for
having followed up on the "Sense of the Senate," by
taking a lead role in the 1994 United Nations
organized crime conference in Naples, through the
presence of the Attorney General, and by signing a
Memorandum of Understanding between the National
Institute of Justice and the United Nations Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch. Yet far
more deserves to be done in this regard. Inasmuch
as the world's transnational crime problem can be
dealt with only by a centralized, coordinated
effort (resting, for want of any other situs, in
the United Nations), the United States should
follow the example of other nations (Canada, Italy,
and Japan, for example) in providing budgetary
assistance. 

Finally, the Administration should be commended for
supporting the Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Act of
1995 that researchers view as a significantly
powerful strategy to deal with international
terrorists subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Local Crime--The Product of Worldwide Events Over
Which We Have Little Control: A New Challenge

The February 1995 House hearings on the 1995 crime
bills centered on the question of whether the
Federal Government or local
governments are best equipped to deal with the
problem of local crime. The conservative view was
premised on a concept of crime as being locally
conditioned and consequently capable of being dealt
with by local authorities. The Administration's
view, in contrast, posited crime as a national
problem (varying by localities) for which no one
locality has the technical competence to develop
intervention strategies; rather, it asserted that a
reservoir of intervention strategies can be
assembled cost beneficially only at the national
level. 

This latter view would comport with scientific
findings. Just as costly cancer or AIDS research
can be conducted at only a few highly specialized
research hospitals (even then requiring national
coordination), so costly crime control research
leading to the development of intervention
strategies must be centralized.

But even that recognition falls short of the mark,
inasmuch as crime is no longer a local or a
national problem. Even local crime is now an
international problem. Its control, thus, may well
fall more clearly under the foreign policy power of
the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 2.3).
This point will be demonstrated by the examples of
drug, fraud, and gang criminality. 

Drug criminality. The connection between street
crime and the importation and dissemination of
narcotic drugs is well established. The national
Drug Use Forecasting program found that in 1992
between one-half and three-quarters of arrestees
had used drugs. This is not the place to reiterate
the immense human and financial cost to the Nation
(including the cost of incarceration, treatment,
quality of life, unemployability, etc.) that the
international narcotics trade inflicts on the
United States and, by now, Europe and much of the
remaining world. 

Drugs are predominantly produced overseas; they are
traded worldwide, but their impact on the crime
rate is local or, cumulatively speaking, national.
The components for a global strategy to deal with
this global, yet local, crime-inducing phenomenon
exist, but have not yet been put into place. U.S.
participation in the worldwide efforts of the
United Nations Narcotic Drug Programmes has been
minimal. Greater national leadership in the
development of a global drug control policy is
urgently needed, or else local crime of every
description cannot be expected to show significant
decreases.

Fraud criminality. When banks and other businesses
operated on a local level, commercial fraud was a
local crime. As our example of the BCCI scandal
demonstrates, fraud criminality has become entirely
global, so that county-level law enforcement
agencies are powerless to combat it. It must not be
assumed that the BCCI case is unique. It may be
noteworthy for its sheer size, but it is simply
demonstrative of the fact that frauds increase
incrementally with an increase in the operational
reach of commercial transactions. Many, but by no
means all, of these are spawned by the
international drug trade, the profits of which are
laundered overseas and reinvested (in this country
or abroad) in anything international fraud cartels
(or individuals) deem worthy of investment, ranging
from real estate to commercial or
entertainment enterprises.

The Administration deserves credit for its active
participation in the work of the Financial Action
Task Force (FATF) of the leading industrial
nations. Perhaps if more were known about such
international crime prevention cooperation, that
itself would serve as a deterrent. 

However, international fraud significantly impacts
the quality of life in the United States.
Uncollected taxes on vast international (ultimately
national) transactions are a burden on legitimate
taxpayers. Enterprises in the hands of organized
crime are not operated for the common good. It may
not be too audacious to ask whether those amassing
enormous wealth through international commercial
fraud will ultimately control parts of our
Government--including the legislative branch. 

Gang criminality. Ethnic strife and the drive for
ethnic empowerment dominate the international
political scene--in Chechnya, Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia, the Near East, Somalia, Rwanda and
Burundi, the Philippines, Laos, Liberia, and Sierra
Leone--not to mention the ethnic conflicts in which
immigrant minorities in Europe are the victims.
Increasingly, our foreign policy has been drawn
into such conflicts, and we are likely to see more
of them. 

Yet, increasingly and significantly, ethnic
problems have also impacted our local crime scene.
Thus, the cocaine wholesale trade is controlled by
illegal immigrants from Colombia; Chinese gangs
(triad-based) control the import of Chinese slave
labor, by the hundreds of thousands, into the
United States, besides 
exploiting Chinese-American business enterprises;
ruthless Jamaican gangs specialize in the arms and
drug trades; Russian gangs--as ferocious as the
Mafia--are invading the fuel distribution market
and the international trade in weapons, nuclear
material, and anything else of value; and Albanian
gangs have become experts in burglary. The list
could be continued ad infinitum. Our point is that,
while vigorous Federal law enforcement has made
great progress in dealing with Italian-American
organized crime, we have no capacity as yet to deal
with the new ethnic organized crime wave that
significantly impacts life at the local level. 

The new ethnic gangs are maintaining intra-ethnic
contacts, as well as relations with their countries
of origin. Thus, while the impact is local, the
solution must be found at the national and
international levels. (Part of the problem is that
we have no capacity to understand, let alone
infiltrate, the new ethnic gangs. As part of the
program to employ 100,000 additional [community
police] officers, a recruitment drive to enlist
young men and women from diverse "new" ethnic
communities into our law enforcement agencies would
be in order.)

In sum, much of so-called local crime is the result
of international developments over which local law
enforcement officials have little, if any, control.
In fact, very little crime may be left for a
category called purely local. The implications for
national leadership and initiative taking in
collaboration with the world community are evident.

The Capacity of the Research Community To Assist
National Law Enforcement With Respect to
Transnational and Internationally Conditioned Local
Criminality

Over the past 30 years, starting from modest
beginnings, American scholars and researchers of
criminology and criminal justice have made vast
progress in researching, understanding, and
targeting for solution many forms of transnational
and internationally
conditioned local criminality. The body of research
can be found in several thousand books, articles,
and research reports. Much of this work has been
accomplished without significant assistance from
government agencies. Nevertheless, the world has
acknowledged the American lead in criminological
theory building and the modeling of crime control
strategies. We are in the process of losing this
lead, as foreign governments and foundations,
convinced of their national interest in
international crime control, are increasingly
strengthening their national capacity (at the
governmental and nongovernmental levels) by
investment in research and development. It would be
wise for the Federal Government to utilize the
existing reservoir of skill and talent in cross-
national criminological research to modestly invest
in this capacity and to harness it in the national
interest. We are not calling for a "Manhattan
Project" to deal with international criminality as
it impacts local crime and thus the quality of life
in America. (Actually, why don't we?) Rather, we
are looking for leadership that would enable us, in
collaboration with our colleagues abroad, and
particularly in support of the United Nations
global effort, to control international
criminality, the font of local crime.

Summary Recommendations

o Section 320908 of the 1994 Crime Act should be
retained and implemented further,  especially as
outlined herein.

o The achievements of the Federal Government in
dealing with the complex problems of  transnational
crime should be publicly highlighted.

o Strategies to deal with transnational crime
require a more focused training of young men  and
women at the Nation's schools of criminal justice
in issues including geography,  geopolitics,
foreign criminal justice systems, comparative
criminological methods, and  options of global
approaches to crime control.

o The capacity of the Bureau of Justice Statistics
and the National Institute of Justice to  develop
international data bases and strategies for dealing
with transnational crime, in  collaboration with
the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal
Justice Branch, as  well as groups of American
scholars, should be
strengthened. 

o The successes of the Federal Government in
dealing with transnational crime through 
deployment of U.S. law
enforcement personnel in overseas stations should
be highlighted  and strengthened.

o Interagency cooperation in dealing with
transnational crime must be strengthened. 

o The Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Act of 1995  
deserves vigorous implementation and constant
evaluation and monitoring as to its impact. 

o Every effort should be made to move the crime
control debate out of the current lockjaw of 
national versus local approaches, because most
local crime is the result of worldwide 
developments falling under the foreign policy
clause of the U.S.  Constitution.

o The focal points of the effort to deal with
transnational and local crime as the product of 
worldwide events should be drug, fraud, and gang
criminality, with constant vigilance  toward other
and emerging additional forms of internationally
conditioned criminality. 

o To deal with the new ethnic gang criminality as
part of the program to deploy 100,000 new  police
officers (community policing) or as part of the
block grant program, a vigorous  recruitment drive
should be initiated to recruit for affected
communities candidates from  new ethnic minorities.

Note

1. From the Appendix to Section 320908, in which
the House recedes to Section 5106 of the 1994 Crime
Bill; this excerpt is nonbinding, bipartisan
"report language."